Clan Uchibi
by Silimaira
Summary: Itachi is rebuilding the clan one offspring at a time. He's outdone Sasuke and soon, his wife teases, they'll be a political party of their own. Or, the aftermath of the homeschool family's SI OC. The Naruto world never knew what hit it.
1. Journal V, i

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* * *

 _Journal V_

 _-Uchiha Main House, Konoha-_

* * *

So, let's review. Or rather, begin, since this marks the start of my fifth volume since my arrival in this world. Much has happened, but I find it's always worthwhile to remember the blessings we've been given. The other word for that is children.

Kazuo, my oldest boy, born not long after the World War ended. Unsurprisingly, he never lacked for classmates, since there was a baby boom shortly after the war. After Kazuo's birth, there was a little stint of finally analyzing my chakra once and for all, and it was determined that Kazuo was, in fact, all the better for having my otherworldly genes. Fortunate, because the next child was already on the way. It should be noted that Kazuo takes after his father's personality and intelligence. Like my clever husband, Kazuo became a chūnin soon after he became a genin. Unlike his older male relatives, he hasn't seen fit to leave the village. I blame my influence.

Sanae is next. Unlike Kazuo, she decided to stay a civilian. In the village's eyes, it's a shame, but I don't blame her—if she'd gone the shinobi route, she would be on a team with an Uzumaki kid, or Sarada, or any of those lot. Sanae says she chose not to become a shinobi because she shares my chakra. In truth, she hates the thought of murder and has set her eyes on the political side of life. I've tutored her in seals, but she isn't interested in pursuing them. She doesn't have to, since Tsunade declared her chakra completely safe. Frankly, Itachi and I trust her to decide what she wants to do with her life, and Sanae will make that decision when she's ready. It's nice to have a kid who isn't risking her life . . . but that's not saying much. Healthy children seem to risk their lives every day, regardless.

Minoru and Minako are disturbingly identical fraternal twins. Fortunately for everyone not in their immediate family, Minoru is a boy and Minako is a girl. They've always had their subtle differences, and as they've grown, it's become easier to tell them apart. They just entered the shinobi ranks and now at least their weapon pouches are on different legs thanks to different dominant sides. I know Naruto must have been a pain in his younger years, and his son Boruto is trying his level best to out-prank Naruto, but my twins have certainly not been a blessing to anyone's sanity. Back when Hinata used to babysit . . . well, that's in the past and she's still friends with me. I fear for the day the twins learn the shadow clone jutsu.

Naomi is the terror of the family. She has more energy than the Nine-Tails—and this is the truth. Kurama has a lot of chakra, but I've met the poor bijū, and he himself has met Naomi and agreed. Where the twins enjoy fooling people, Naomi enjoys being blunt. This has gotten her into trouble with her parents on multiple occasions. Anyone who can get on _Itachi's_ bad side (however rarely) has serious potential to go a long way in life. I have a horrible suspicion that Naruto is going to put Naomi and his daughter Himawari on the same genin team one day, and on his head be it. If I ever become a jōnin sensei, it definitely won't be with that team. Besides, that would be a long time in the future. I'm afraid I'm having too much fun with my own offspring to take a vacation just yet.

After the force of nature that was Naomi, Mikoto comes across as an angelic child. In all fairness, she's about as close to the ideal as Kazuo was. Unlike Kazuo, Mikoto has a stubborn streak that brings to mind the Milky Way galaxy. It's always been terribly amusing when new genin teams show up on my doorstep, but I can say with bias that the reaction to Mikoto—a sweet, adorable girl as loving as her paternal grandmother who subsequently sets into them with fire unknown by jutsu—has been my favorite so far.

Taiki is my baby. He hasn't had much of a chance to grow up yet. Intriguingly, when Sasuke visits, which is rare, the one thing he wants to do is hold my babies. Taiki's the first one he's actually held without being prodded. Like the brat brother Sasuke is, he told me that I'd probably need him to hold my son, what with another baby on the way. Such idiocy. When I need help, Itachi always sends a clone or two. It's not rocket science.

Kazuo, Sanae, Minoru and Minako, Naomi, Mikoto, Taiki, and an unborn baby on the way. Yes, that covers it. Well, except for the whys and whens and little things that get left out in the hubbub of life.

I suppose there is one additional person in our family that bears mentioning. There are extended family members—Sasuke, Sakura, and my darling niece Sarada—and, of course, a certain husband that I consider important. The unknown in the equation is me. I defied the odds. I defied the laws of chakra. I refused to believe that fate couldn't be changed, and I won. After that great victory, it wasn't much harder to go ahead and pull off a life expectation that shocked the shinobi world even more than marrying Itachi.

Marry a well-known traitor and help him rejoin the village? That's forgivable. Sakura waited a few years to do the same thing and no one batted an eye. Have seven kids, however, and everyone loses their mind.

Like it's not enough to marry a man with PTSD and the Mangekyō without myself having shinobi strength! But enough about the old days.

Once upon a time, a homeschooled girl from a large family woke up in a world full of shinobi. It wasn't so bad, really—I was usually able to keep up journaling, and none of the kidnappings turned out to be permanent, so it all ended up all right. Raising the kids hasn't dropped my sanity much lower than it was to begin with. Whatever will I do with myself now?

Reform the country, of course. And care for my family.

And right now, go change a diaper.

* * *

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* * *

 _~Don't worry, I don't know what this is, either. Besides a plot bunny. I mean, why_ aren't _there large families in Naruto? It's cultural, and I get that. I would just like to point out that having huge families has been done, can be done, and is done by several families I personally know._

 _And hush. You know that Itachi with umpteen cute kids is the most adorable thing ever._

 _The concept for this came from a picture I drew of Itachi and a hypothetical future family—was it ever hard to get him middle-aged!—and I couldn't resist as more and more kids kept sneaking onto the paper. They were cute! There's a link to the picture on my profile if you're curious. It took me some time to draw that adult face._

 _Where is this going? I don't know. Maybe short random chapters. Maybe even chronological order. There's a really long backstory behind this, but I don't intend to do more than hint at it for the moment. That wouldn't be any fun._

 _Any suggestions? Anyone else inordinately amused by this whole thing? I know I am. I'm off to snicker right now, in fact. *shakes head* Eh, it was worth it for the title alone. Right? *crickets*_

 _Ha! I fully expect this to become the Next Big Thing, guys! ;) (But seriously, if you noticed typos or think I should reword the summary or anything, let me know.) Just tell me what you want to see next._


	2. Journal V, ii

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* * *

 _Journal V_

 _-Uchiha Main House, Konoha-_

* * *

How to describe life in a family with the size and influence of this one? It's not an easy task. There's constant activity. Conflict. And people say this peacetime is easier than the last war was. Ha! Then again, I was a newlywed back then and wasn't as good at multitasking.

Hm, I feel nostalgic. Since the kids are eating lunch and harassing your clone right now, I'll just page back through the archive. I don't really want to record the numerous times Taiki spit up this morning, or Mikoto's new talent of breaking chairs, or yet another disruptive behavior report from the academy about the twins.

It's been a while. Some days I forget what happened in the past. I was young then. Impulsive.

So much that I befriended the first missing-nin I met, and I nearly killed myself healing him. In my defence, though, it was healing Kisame that really exhausted me. You were so mad that I'd risk so much for strangers. Turns out it was a good investment.

Ah, Taiki's crying now. I guess I'll take pity on him. Shame.

Our relationship was such a secret, I don't know how I would have managed without these journals.

* * *

 _Journal II_

 _-Park bench, west end, Konoha-_

* * *

 _"So, come on, how did you nail him?"_

 _I blinked. "Well, we saw each other a few times, exchanged letters. I don't know when he decided he liked me."_

 _"I knew that!" Ino scoffed. "You blushed a lot, he saved your sorry butt, blah blah, very predictable and boring. What I want to know is, how did he propose?"_

 _The girls all leaned in like vultures as I considered my choice of words. "It was the traditional Uchiha way," I explained. "The boy says 'hnn,' and if the girl happens to say 'yes,' they go to the nearest priest."_

 _Ino bonked me over the head. "You liar, 'fess up."_

* * *

 _Journal V_

 _-Uchiha Main House, Konoha-_

* * *

I went to the hospital today with Mikoto and Taiki. Tsunade thinks Taiki's chakra is developing more quickly than any of his siblings' did. He does still tend to fall asleep in my arms. It's not surprising that my chakra is boosting his this well. Apparently, my body has a mothering instinct that took until today to discover. None of this bothered me.

The problem came when one of the nurses offered to give Mikoto a tour while we waited on Taiki's test results. Mikoto wanted to go. I gave the nurse my permission and watched her cute little braids bounce around a doorway.

Before one minute had passed, they were in the break room, and Mikoto was trembling. I zipped over to rescue her.

A roomful of hospital staff paused their conversations as I opened the door, took my innocent daughter, and walked out.

"Mommy, what 'bree-ding'?"

I smiled at her and explained that good breeding was something all kind and polite people had.

I don't care if people speculate that Itachi and I are out to rebuild the clan's glory or fulfill a mission or anything, really. Talking in front of the impressionable kids I'm trying to raise with a semblance of manners? I was angry.

I'm still angry and I figured better to take it out here than on someone. It's _frustrating_! The rest of the village can vent and rant and get as annoyed as they want, but not _me_. Oh, no! I'm the one who has to be superhuman and never show a hint of my feelings in return. Always watched, always judged. Surely it's impossible to raise more than three kids without losing something!

The only thing I'm _losing_ is respect toward people who think it's their _right_ to be _cruel_.

That's it, I'm summoning Satoshi and going flying. I'll bring the kids. The younger crows need socializing anyway.

Ugh, life.

Okay, I'm done for now.

* * *

"What was it like, growing up with just one brother?"

Itachi rolled over to fix me with one of his how-do-you-come-up-with-these-things looks. "It was . . . pleasant. I loved him. He was adorable."

I waved a hand, but I smiled at my lounging husband. "All three of my baby brothers were adorable, too. It's not like Sasuke had a monopoly."

Itachi's face darkened. I snorted at the change of mood. "Yes, of course I miss them. I probably have another one by now. They're not babies anymore and they've grown. I miss them, but you know I chose you, and I don't regret it. I would have moved away to marry you anyway."

Insert kissing.

"Right. But back to my previous question, didn't you ever fight him for food?"

"No."

"No wonder he turned out that way."

Itachi snorted. "I'm not going to starve good manners into our children."

"Quiet! You know they wake up when we talk about them."

He laughed. "Is that a trait of being in a large family?"

"No, I think it's from their Uchiha side. Quit snorting, you ill-mannered Uchiha."

"That wasn't me. Naomi just knocked on our door."

He snickered when I jerked. "You liar. She's still in bed. They're all in bed. Another bad Uchiha trait. How am I going to train you all out of it?"

He smirked.

Insert more kissing.

* * *

"Kids, get off your father! Sanae, Minoru, Minako, Naomi, Mikoto, _off_." Okay, then.

I hauled them off with chakra strings and gave Itachi a Glance. "Go. The delegates are waiting!"

All six of the aforementioned children stared back at me sadly. " _For the good of the village_ ," I emphasized.

Itachi looked very pathetic, but at least there was still one thing that would tear him away from the kids, if only by a small margin. He flickered away.

I eyed the remaining kids sternly. "Now that he's gone, let's talk about the state of your bedrooms. . . ."

* * *

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* * *

 _~Looks like this is gonna be a sort of "slices of life" story. Did you have a favorite? I've been noting the requests and they should all pop up at some point. I can address a lot of things with this diary-excerts format. Should I start a main plot with the Boruto stuff? Should I go back in time to the budding romance? Ah, so many possibilities._


	3. Journal I, i

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* * *

 _Journal V_

 _-Uchiha Main House, Konoha-_

* * *

"Mother."

It's Sanae. She's quiet again, brooding about the boy from Iwa she's been seeing without my knowledge. I pat the empty space next to me on the sofa, putting down my book. "What are you reading?" she asks.

"A medical treatise," I tell her. "Your father found it on one of his recent missions. It's about contracted animals' chakra and it has several interesting case studies. You'd like some of them."

"Oh," she replies, trailing off as she contemplates whatever purpose she came to me with. I lean back, relaxing and letting my eyes drift shut. Mikoto is throwing globs of mud at whichever young crow is on yard duty today. Taiki is snoring soundly in his crib. Naomi is still at Naruto's house, and frankly I don't care to know what she's up to at the moment.

Life is so simple these days. Or at least while Naomi is playing with Himewara and the twins are out training. Kazuo is away on the Fire Daimyō's entourage. Without them, the hassles of the evening fade in the light of morning, and by afternoon, my sanity returns.

Admittedly, a big factor of my overall sanity is the ability to sense my children and control them if need be. But anyway, enough of _that_.

Mikoto scores a hit on her friend the crow (come to think of it, there was a half-grown male that hung around more often than not) and the noise of its squawking causes Sanae to twitch. I smile and reach for my treatise.

"What happened when you met Father?" Sanae asks quickly.

Ah, time to abandon the treatise.

"Nothing much," I say truthfully. "I offered to share my dinner with him."

She frowns, a quick frown from her Uchiha side, and shakes her head. "No, Mother. I know he was a missing-nin. From the research I've done, not only was he infamous, but he also would have killed you on sight. What happened that made you different? What kept you different later on?"

"I'm not different," I tell her. "I simply decided not to treat him that way."

It's a decision that saved more than one life.

* * *

 _Journal I_

 _-written as far away from Jiraiya as possible, Konoha-_

* * *

I remember my first impression wasn't positive. I mean, there wasn't much of a chance.

Waking up to a previously fictional world wouldn't be too bad on its own, but the small detail of being abandoned in an immense forest caught my fancy more. Allow me to express my utter . . . terror, honestly.

You're shopping with your aunt, and you fall—trip—pushed—it doesn't matter. You come to your senses in a gorgeous forest, tangled in shopping bags and aching more than should be possible.

I couldn't find civilization, I couldn't boil water, and my food was gone in less than a day. My shopping bags and childhood love of nature saved me for a time.

In fact, I counted twenty-three days of utter solitude and no hint of humanity save my constant grief for my family. I cried and cried. A pathetic, miserable sadness that accomplished nothing, yes, but I refused to let go of it, because the alternative . . . I am fortunate that I simply never stopped missing them enough to live on for them.

My first impression of this world is something I haven't confessed. For you see, my first impression was not from the trees, or even the first rabbit I snared and had to kill with my pocketknife. It wasn't the precious minutes of sunset I wasted with fumbling attempts to start another fire.

My first impression, I am sorry to say, was not even the fire that raced through my veins as the days rolled on. I learned to deal with that, and to lessen the pain slightly by concentrating a certain way.

No, my first impression waited until the rabbit was nearly beginning to char. The moment was a host of negatives—singing didn't keep the burning in my veins at bay, and a branch in the actual fire seized the time to explode. I yelped, and gasped as the world around me burned impossibly vivid.

The embers had broken my concentration, and with them, I'd discovered something of this world. But still, this was not my first impression, because even that early into my chakra's development, I had somehow felt the absence of intensity that signifies a person. The strange sensation worried me. I scaled the nearest tree in seconds.

Twenty-three days with no human interaction is not enough to change me, but I must say, providing for oneself in the wild teaches one to act preemptively. I heard nothing but leaves rustling in the breeze. It was nothing, I decided.

Then a shadowed form walked up to my rabbit.

I froze. It was a person. A person with a bulky straw hat and what might have been a long, concealing overcoat. The hat tipped back smoothly, and in the shelter of the leaves, I shrank away. "Come down," a deep voice said.

It was surreal. The white-hot pain that had lit up my body, seeing an actual person, and more surprising: _recognizing that person_.

He should have been hard to recognize.

I hid in my tree and tried to stem the thoughts rushing through my head. The first one, though?

 _It's Itachi Uchiha. I'll never see my family again_. That I was probably close to death didn't even strike my mind. After all, I'd spent twenty-two days fighting starvation for the sole reason of reuniting with my family. Seeing him didn't spark my self-preservation. Instead, one of my fears had been answered. I was no longer in my own world.

I wasn't cowering so much as trying to pull my shattered mind together. My cousins. My friends. My parents. My _siblings_.

It's not that I never showed them I loved them, but it's hard to understand just how much we _need_ them. I wonder if I'll ever learn to move past it.

The man below sighed quietly and slipped off his hat. He watched me blankly.

But let's get something straight. I knew who Itachi was. I knew he was a prodigy, he'd chosen between his clan and his village, in appearance he'd switched sides. I knew he had a slew of problems and shrouded motivations.

But because he'd sighed, I knew he was kind. Kind and sad.

All he knew about me was that I'd hidden. I'd attempted to hide in the tree—and what else would a female do when confronted by a man? He didn't know for sure that I'd recognized him. He didn't know anything about me.

And so I gathered my senses and jumped out of the tree, _not_ recognizing one of this world's most infamous missing-nin. A wise choice, it turned out, since I landed too heavily and had to take an awkward half-step forward. Like I'd let him know I knew his real skill level after doing _that_!

Still, I blushed impressively, and I managed to meet his eyes. They were so serious . . . I couldn't fight the laughter that welled up within me so suddenly.

Itachi, a man who'd shown a scared girl in a tree his face just to reassure her. A man who regretted the fear others always felt. A man kind enough to treat a clumsy stranger with respect.

I don't know, maybe it's stupid to laugh around a missing-nin.

Whatever! If he'd wanted me dead, I would already be dead. End of story.

It occurred to me that since the rabbit smelled kind of burned, this would be a great time to move it away from the fire. I stepped forward.

A pair of intense dark eyes warned me to stay back.

"Yeah, right," I muttered, and I picked the spit off the fire and ignored him completely. "Okay, now how to cut you up? Should I have done that first?"

I glanced from my charred trophy to my intimidating visitor. "Um, would you like some? There's probably a medium rare bit somewhere. I couldn't find any spices today, but it might be worth eating."

Sharp black eyes met mine. He said nothing.

"Awesome," I replied, and I set the rabbit on a rock I'd washed earlier in the nearby stream. Burnt fingers did not appeal to me. Hot food did, but the meat was still smoking. Pity. Well, better overdone than undercooked. I sharpened my pocketknife on the rock and planned the bunny's dismantling. There was no reaction to my knife whatsoever.

"You have strange chakra," he offered eventually.

"I don't have any," I said unthinkingly.

"Is that so?"

"Um."

Well, considering I'd been born in a universe without chakra, this was definitely something to consider. If I didn't have chakra here, I'd be dead, right? This, I supposed, meant that the pain I kept feeling was either chakra or a universe of chakra eating me alive. Cheery.

I hacked off one of the rabbit's haunches and offered it to the silent missing-nin. He accepted the leg and sat down on the other side of the fire.

For a month, my life had been full of life-and-death problems. The day I'd had a fever, I hadn't been able to forage and I'd nearly died of weakness. I'd had to guess which plants were edible, and which were the poisonous cousins. Body fat that had always been inconvenient had quickly vanished, and now I'd finally accepted that yes, it was true that animal fat was the only way I'd keep myself alive.

And yet somehow, after an infamous killer accepted my food and began eating it, I considered that maybe, just maybe, I would live through this.

The rabbit was tough at the edges, but chewable enough that my starving body found it heavenly.

We ate, and then we sat in strangely companionable silence. At some point, I fed the fire some of the fuel I'd collected, and after another long silence, I told my visitor goodnight. I climbed the tree again and wrapped my coat around me. The fire crackled in the lazy summer night. "It was nice to meet you," I mumbled, and I fell asleep.

I woke once during the night. He was feeding the fire from the base of my tree. There was something strange about this, and I twisted, because something about the odd serenity—

"Go back to sleep."

I relaxed.

When I woke at sunrise, he was gone. This didn't surprise me, since I couldn't feel him.

Feel him, you ask?

Well, that was the odd thing. The burning sensation had vanished, and in its place was an odd intensity. The night before, there had been a moment I'd been blinded by pain. It had exploded in a burst of colorful agony, much in the same way that a good punch makes colors explode behind one's eyes.

At some point, the burning feeling had faded away, and now the intense colors remained all around me. There was no place in the mix for Itachi.

And that was good, I told myself. I had to focus on not dying. And you know, it's my first time thinking about it, but if I hadn't pushed past the mind-numbing terror at a world that didn't have my family in it, well.

Decisions have consequences.

* * *

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* * *

 _~Eh, just figured I'd start somewhere, since some of you have been curious._

 _The past events of this story are a bit convoluted, but it's a journal/diary format. Her knowledge is limited by the time the entries were written in. And of course, the journal isn't meant for the public eye, so it's not quite a full, comprehensive story. Yet. The story will come._

 _I'm pretty excited about the character development that's going to happen. You've seen the "modern day" stuff already, and this narration has some differences. And_ _similarities, of course. It's going to be fun to get from point B to point A, as I see it. Not to mention the relationship with Itachi, which should be fun. He's got some changing to do, too._


	4. Journal I, ii

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* * *

 __ _Journal I_

 _-written from my currently Jiraiya-free apartment, Konoha-_

* * *

The worst thing about being alone is the threat of starvation. After that comes the impressive uncertainty.

I suppose I was lonely, too, but think of it from my perspective: after weeks of zero judgement from any living thing, a human showed up with barely any notice. It's not that I minded him, particularly. It's just that I'd gotten used to the solitary freedom. Of course I resented the intruder.

Or so I told myself when my thoughts kept straying back to his face in the firelight.

All else aside, I now knew more about my surroundings and realized the oversight I'd made. I should have asked him for directions while I'd had the chance. While the thought of civilization _here_ didn't exactly appeal to me, learning at least what country I was in sounded important.

Hopefully, I was in the Land of Fire. But that wouldn't mean I was safe.

Was it too much to ask—staying alone forever in the woods, hoping against hope to see my family again?

Itachi came back three days later, this time in the middle of the day and from the opposite direction. It was strange. Not that he came back, although I'd convinced myself he never would.

My world was full of colors now. Animals darted past in bright, cheery shades. Plants, and even the earth, were gentle and solid. It was an overwhelming three-dimensional perception of the world, and I must say, it had its appeal. The colors were so vivid and lifelike that it seemed I could reach out and touch them.

The downside was the mental stamina required to not simply curl up in a ball and try to shut it all out.

When Itachi stepped into the range of the colors, I was busy taking the trickiest bath of my life. Getting stuck with one set of clothes plus a winter coat had limited my options in the cleanliness department, as it happened. I wanted to stay clean, but I couldn't just change clothes every morning. Showers are hard to come by without hand tools, too.

There was a nice collection of waterfalls in this part of the forest. I'd trapped my clothes underneath the running water. In lieu of soap, one has to get creative. And optimism's important, too—after all, I had running water.

Meeting Itachi had made me painfully aware that from now on, there was no guarantee of privacy. That was why it had taken me this long to take a bath again. Still, I'd taken a few precautions. My previously cleaned and dried coat was lying beside the stream. I was also using the alien color perception to sense my surroundings. It was worth a shot!

The jumble of colors around me parted as I was washing my hair, and I _almost_ didn't catch the vertical blob of colorlessness coming slowly toward me. I didn't even realize the colorless shape was a person—but just in case, I threw on my coat with speed born of horror.

There were still twigs in my hair. I had a bruise on one shin from falling over a log during a recent storm. My knees were scratched up, my hair looked like a horror movie, and I was still soaked. It was about the most disgusting I've ever felt in my whole life.

Thirty seconds later, this dark-headed male appeared through the tree trunks. He was perfectly dry and neat. But that didn't matter, because I was too busy dying of embarrassment to care. My cheeks were burning nearly literally. I forced a smile and looked at the flat eyes that were taking in my drowned rat appearance. Although I suppose most rats don't have thigh-length coats.

"Hello again," I said.

The silence was so awkward that I bit down on several laughs.

Um.

"Could you maybe not sneak up on me in future?" I asked.

He considered my suggestion, and while I'm not certain I didn't imagine it, I'm pretty sure his cheeks took on a hint of red. The expression on his face turned into the blankest face I've ever seen, too. This was also kind of funny, but it brought my thoughts full circle to the reason I was so embarrassed.

I let the "conversation" lie and turned to head back to the tree that was my current headquarters. Itachi followed me like a tangible ghost, hovering beside my stack of firewood while I knelt carefully and sorted through today's bag of grazings. I had a few mouthfuls of violet leaves and flowers, a miraculous armload of hosta leaves, and something that looked and smelled like parsley. It was a good haul for this late in the day—I'd actually had enough to eat breakfast. Ah, the perks of knowing some survival knowledge and ending up in the wrong hemisphere.

Ah, the perks of having a survival app on my phone _and dropping it as I fell_.

I could make a fire. I could make a shelter if the temperature ever began dropping. I could hide from dangerous animals. When I had time to spare (let's be honest: when I ran out of recognizable edible plants), I hid from the non-dangerous animals to see what they ate. I wasn't _hopeless_.

Just somewhat helpless at present.

I piled the hosta leaves back into my grocery bag and brushed the dried-out, decaying leaves off of the fallen log I'd used as a table. The violets were clean. I left them on a clean patch of bark before picking up the parsley.

Well, the leaf-wrapped parsley that could well be poisonous, which would be bad. I'd already started the testing method of touch-rub-spit-nibble-cook-just-in-case. Actually, it was time to move on to the tasting stage of that. Only . . . I really didn't want to chew on something poisonous in front of my visitor.

Meanwhile, Itachi was reading a scroll, to all intents and purposes completely at ease.

I guess stupid urges were becoming a thing with me, because suddenly I really, really wanted to get a reaction out of him. Usually I would do that by way of a joke.

Today I reached over the log and pulled out a kunai from my stash.

A second later, the risk of what I'd done hit me, and—Itachi twitched. This time I couldn't help the snort of laughter.

It was awful. He hadn't reacted until I'd jerked in realization of my own threat. The problem was that _his_ twitch had followed _my_ twitch. Or to put it bluntly, he'd effectively laughed at me.

And I had definitely laughed back.

Weird. Well, regardless, I needed more sustenance than hosta leaves, and I needed to rinse them before I lost too much time.

I left the campsite and went back to the collection of waterfalls, painfully aware that he was following me. I wondered why. But at the end of the day, he hadn't killed me yet and I needed to eat.

I _needed_ to eat. I was wasting away.

There were deer and bird tracks in the pebbled banks upstream of the waterfalls. I sat down beside one of the drier patches of moss and closed my eyes.

The energy was incredibly bright and cheery today. It rippled through the minnows, darted through the squirrels, sang through the birds. I sorted through the myriad shimmering colors, finally settling on a quivering shape that I took to be a rabbit. Hopefully. Either that or a very large chipmunk.

 _I'm sorry_ , I thought. _At least with other predators, you'd have a sporting chance_.

The brilliant color of my prey was so beautiful it almost hurt to focus on it, but focus I did. The rabbit's color was intense. By contrast, the earth around it was soft and solid.

 _I'm sorry_ , I repeated, and I lifted a hand from my lap and curled my fingers. I imagined a string attaching my fingers to the warmth of the rabbit, reeling it towards me.

I had _no_ idea how this worked, but the rabbit came. Reluctantly. Fearfully. I readied my knife hand and ran through my habitual pep talk of you-will-starve-the-rest-of-the-way-without-animal-fat. Sad stuff.

The rabbit hopped up to my knife. I tightened my empty fist around the colors and dispatched the poor thing. Leading the animals places didn't seem to hurt them. Prolonging their fear, though? There are things nothing should be forced to endure.

The beautiful color faded as the rabbit bled out in my grasp. That was the worst part—it was doomed, but I had to hold it even as its colors slipped from my senses.

I picked it up by the back legs once I was sure it had lost consciousness. Poor thing. On the other hand, I was being a baby.

At least I didn't cry over this one. Using the colors to catch things is so . . . deceitful.

"Wanna skin it?" I asked the air.

No answer.

My head swung to face the person-shaped blob that had come to watch me murder a small animal. No sense in pretending I couldn't feel him. See him? Ugh.

"Fine," I said. "Then could you go light the fire?"

I took that as a yes, because his chakra headed off in my fire's direction. I very nearly cheered. I could finally take my clothes out of the water! Or even, say, put them back on. They would be wet. I didn't care.

It was when we were eating the hot, juicy meat that I made my move. "So, um, I'm not dead."

He raised an eyebrow.

I had an explanatory speech all planned out, but somehow I bit my tongue before I could continue, which called for a frantic bite of the nice, cool hosta leaves. He used his dinner kunai to slice a second helping off the rabbit as I tried to save face. Oh, forget it, all I did around this guy was look bad. "I was wondering why?"

"Hnn," said Itachi, and I was about to huff and stalk off to my tree when he continued.

By taking a few more bites of rabbit.

No, wait, I think he really did mean to speak. Ah, here it was: "You have an odd chakra presence."

I cocked my head and waited.

"Thank you for the meal. Good night."

I narrowed my eyes at him, letting him know I wasn't satisfied or pleased. Not that what I thought mattered. "Night." I huffed and wrapped myself in my coat. I wish I could say I fell asleep without another sound, but I've never really been cursed with that blessing, and I can almost guarantee that a few more quiet laughs sneaked out of me at some point. It was just so nice to have someone to hear them. . . .

He tried to sneak off an hour before dawn, but I forced myself awake. "Where are you going?" Or, more realistically, "Whurryu gooan."

He picked up his hat from its semi-permanent position on the log. "That's none of your concern."

I blinked the firelight out of my eyes. "All right, when will you be back?"

He put the hat on and walked into the woods.

Oh, no. I was _through_ with playing the patient, nonabrasive girl. I pulled at the heat or colors or whatever my senses were, grabbed his chakra, and yanked.

He tripped.

And then he was right in front of me, holding a kunai to my throat. "Don't do that again." I froze. But not for the obvious reason. The colors were gone.

I stared into his eyes (he seemed a bit angry) in disbelief. "What did you _do_? Where are they?"

He withdrew the knife and stepped back along the branch. "Where are what?" He was humoring me. This time it wasn't funny.

"The colors! I can't feel them."

"Hnn," he frowned. "I didn't do anything."

I don't know why he turned around. I don't know why he left me without at least a decent threat.

I knew that Itachi Uchiha was a killer and he didn't leave loose ends.

I'll tell you that when I watched Itachi leave, I _felt_ like a loose end.

A lonely one.

* * *

 _~I figured I'd continue with "the past" for a bit. So I've spent the past few days researching Japan's edible plants, and that's been pretty interesting. Did you know that all species of hosta are edible? The leaves are best before they unfurl completely, but even the mature leaves can be cooked to get rid of any bitter flavor. Cool stuff! So . . . I'm out to try a hosta, now. Just look out for pesticides, I guess._

 _Any thoughts about this chapter? Looking forward to watching the plot develop? Interested in the "modern times" part of the story? Feel free to let me know._


	5. Journal I, iii

_._

* * *

 __ _Journal_ _I_

 _-written in a desolate park in the early morning since Jiraiya found me last night, Konoha-_

* * *

I'm going about this backwards, but I really have a need to vent about Kisame, the Akatsuki, and Jiraiya's relentless love of scaring me. I'll get back to my story in a second—so much for getting through it chronologically without griping about current events—but really.

"Tami-chan, what do you remember about Hoshigaki's chakra?"

"Um, healing it."

"Do you understand what it is to be targeted by an S-ranked organization of missing nins?"

"I doubt I'm really a 'target.'"

"Ah, I see you've forgotten what Tsunade-chan told us when she handed you off to me. Well, allow me to refresh your memory. You have an innate healing skill that was previously unheard of. The Akatsuki are responsible for several high-profile assassinations, kidnappings, and massacres. It's a matter of time until one of those kidnappings becomes your own."

When he put it that way, yes, I was a target. There was still the off-chance that Itachi had kept me a secret, but I knew better than to mention that. I think I responded with something like, "Aren't you supposed to reassure me that you'll keep me safe?"

And Jiraiya, who my memory always insisted had a wonderful bedside manner with Naruto, gave me one of his _glances_. "If that worries you, you should focus more on your training."

I scowled. If _he_ was to be believed, I should have been kidnapped at least once a week by now. From what I know, no one had ever tried. I wasn't exactly famous or from a clan.

Right, well, now that I've fallen sufficiently away from my original topic, I suppose I should get back to regaling. Hm. So after waking up in this world, I met Itachi, and then soon after that, he came back to visit me again. Funny how many times that happened.

As the saying goes, third time's the charm!

As practicality went, I was fast asleep and it would have been a _great_ time to kidnap me.

* * *

Itachi resurfaced without any fanfare, showing up in the pale dawn to scare the life out of me when I drifted awake. I nearly reached for the wrong end of one of my kunai. Fortunately, once I sensed him with my recently-returned weirdo color-sensing, I was clever enough to open my eyes.

Itachi's black eye stood out the most. It was kind of pretty in the silvery light of morning. I was kind enough to not comment. Unfortunately for him, he also had a wad of bandages wrapped around his left forearm. My mood rapidly switched gears from _ack intruder help_ to a more natural dollop of amusement.

"That's new," I commented, swinging down from my habitual perch in a tree to poke my nose into his business. "Is that what fashion's like these days?" I wrinkled my nose and felt my eyes crinkle cheerfully in response. Wow, did I smile a lot when I had company or what? We were barely a minute in!

My long-haired visitor looked up from unwrapping his arm (a meticulous process) to where I stood over him. He looked at me neutrally. "Good morning."

He was sitting against a tree that was pretty close to yesterday's fire. The dormant coals were all but begging to be fed again . . . but I didn't care. I grinned and plopped down next to my visitor, crossing my legs with every intention of getting comfortable. "Is it jagged or is it a clean cut?"

Dark eyes looked up from their task and treated me to a flat stare. I smiled wider to hide the teeny tiny moment of panic his look had given me. He rightly ignored me and peeled his bandage away from an ugly, bleeding arm. Ahem, I mean wound. _On_ his arm. Although the two seemed uncommonly correlated. I pursed my lips at the scene. Was there an appropriate response to this kind of thing?

Nah, probably not.

My lips quirked again like the traitors they were. "So, did you get hit by a cheese grater?"

There wasn't a response to _that_ , either, and Itachi didn't try to formulate one. He blinked rather slowly. One of those inverted, hissing sighs pulled its way through my teeth at the sight. He was in pain. _Very_ , and very obviously so.

Other people's pain was a big part of why I hated to look at wounds, thanks to the wonder that is empathy. A big wave of that hit me now, and I cast about for my very small knowledge of field medicine in the wrong hemisphere. "There's purslane," I said. "I can build the fire if you have something to boil water with. I know how to do sutures, too, although I've only done them on animals. The purslane is right around the bend in the creek over there, if—"

"It won't work on a chakra-inflicted wound," he explained. The sheer amount of air exhaled during that sentence belied his outward calm.

"Okay, then, can I help you at all? It looks too big to stitch up, but at the very least my hands are probably cleaner than yours. I can _definitely_ hold bandages for you or help you tie a knot."

He didn't shoot that idea down.

Once the whole exploration of a previously fictional character's arm messiness was over with, I trotted a ways down the creek and trapped the bloodied bandages under some rocks. Then I returned upstream to fish. And rational thought returned for the day to berate me for my stupid actions and comments.

I'd been insensitive. To the only human I'd seen since I'd arrived in this world.

The color-sensing headache that this world had given me was back with a vengeance.

The last time I'd seen him, I'd hurt him with my stupid rainbow powers.

I'd totally blushed when I'd accidentally brushed some of his fingers. How pathetic was that?

I fought off the sissy thoughts and caught more than enough fish for breakfast.

The fire was triple the size it had been when I'd left it, I found when I arrived back at my "base." The sight reminded me that I'd failed to build it back up myself before I'd fled to the stream. Oops. "Thanks," I muttered. Right, so the fire was hot enough to cook now; I should go get the fish I'd filleted since my hands were free now that I didn't have to coax last night's embers back to life. . . .

I collected the fillets I'd strung along green reeds and propped them against the fire like so many marshmallows. Itachi watched quietly.

Oh, shoot, this was harder than I'd thought. Whatever. Go with my gut! "Look, I . . . um, about that—"

Clearly my gut wasn't very good at articulating things. I took a deep breath and started over. "I made you trip when you were last here. Well, not here. A few miles away or wherever we were when . . . um, I wanted to say I'm sorry. I mean, I apologize for it. I must have hurt you and it was really a backstabby kind of thing to do in the first place."

I listened to the placid sound of silence before I had to add, "I didn't know that would happen. I mean, it works on the animals, but I've never tried doing that to a person. I really shouldn't have let myself get angry. Stupid things always happen when I'm angry."

We lapsed into silence again (I say we, I mean I did). I turned some of the fillets over in the hopes that they would brown. The odd smell of hot raw meat began to spread. I shifted. One of my legs was asleep. The urge to apologize struck another time. "And just so you know, I'm really, really sorry for the whole blasé attitude I had when you showed up injured. I shouldn't have acted like that. I—"

One of the reeds closest to the fire exploded. I yelped and tried to save the fillet before it could fall onto the coals. I failed.

Amusement radiated off of my visitor in waves.

I snorted and rolled my eyes. "Fine," I said wryly, "you cook the food and I'll be silent and mysterious, shall I?" I held one of the reeds out to him to give him a chance to explode his own breakfast.

He took the fishmallow-on-a-stick and met my eyes. "My name is Itachi."

"I'm Tami," I said instinctively. "Nice to meet you."

Why was my body relaxing? Shouldn't his admission have put me into fight or flight mode?

"Is your arm going to scab over soon?" I asked after I'd gotten used to the happy sense of security.

"No," he said.

"Okay," I mused. "What if you got the reddish stuff in your arm out? Would it heal then?"

Itachi treated me to a very weird look. He put his partially-eaten fishmallow down very slowly and deliberately. "Kindly explain your chakra abilities," he commanded. "Now."

I had an unnerving 360° perception of colors that didn't even match the normal colors of my vision. They'd disappeared after I'd tripped him but come back even stronger and sharper. I was pretty sure this wasn't how chakra works, especially when I thought about the nasty burning sensation I'd had during my early days here.

"Isn't chakra supposed to be painless? I mean, if I focus too hard on the red chakra in your arm, I can feel it burning. How am I supposed to—"

"Hush, Tami-chan."

It was a good thing that he was staring into the fire, because that last syllable made my jaw drop. We were speaking English, not Japanese! Right?

I finished my half of breakfast while Itachi watched the fire die. _Oh, sure, go ahead and take your time. It's not like one of us has stuff to do_.

"It sounds like your chakra is very similar to nature chakra. It probably hurts because it's still adapting, which is unusual in a kekkei genkai of a person your age but not unheard of. You have a very powerful bloodline limit."

"Yeah, seeing ultraviolet rainbows is a pretty powerful trait," I groused.

"Seeing nature chakra," Itachi corrected. "And being able to sense spiritual chakra. Any ninja village would want you on their side." How cheery.

"Well, they can want all they like. I don't plan on being a weapon."

"Hn." I was really starting to hate that sound.

* * *

I couldn't help but watch as Itachi pulled a bunch of kunai out of a pocket for sharpening. His left hand could barely hold the whetstone. I rubbed my own arm reflexively. I ought to have gone scouting for berries, or perhaps caught more fish and tried smoking them. But something about that wound was rubbing me the wrong way.

I put on my game face and continued our little discussion about my strange abilities. "Do you think the blips are ninja?"

"What blips?"

I pointed east. "There are two over that way. I can still feel them, so I guess they're walking."

Why was one of the colors of my chakra sensing _clear_? Clear isn't a color. But then, if I'd made the rules to my chakra, I wouldn't be explaining everything to my dearest friend in this world.

Itachi shut his eyes for a moment, frowning. "I can't feel anything."

Huh. I guess my range was better than I'd thought? There was an awful lot of feedback to sort though. I smiled grimly and forced the countless memories of overstimulation away. "Can you feel me?"

"It would be hard not to."

Well it wasn't like I expected to have stealth skills compared to someone like Itachi. Still, if I was going to be hypersensitive about sensing chakra, I did want to know what I could do. And I wanted to experiment while Itachi was still around. He knew how to wrap a mean bandage.

I tamped down on my chakra sensing, feeling my connection to the two distant people and quite a few animals fade. Itachi's chakra quickly sharpened into a body with four distinct limbs, one of which was pulsing red. I winced.

With a bit more concentration, I blocked out the colors and Itachi's form. "Better," he commented.

"Weird." And worrying. "Your arm feels worse. Can you still move your fingers?"

"You can still sense the chakra?"

I smiled at him. "You're avoiding my question, so thank you for answering it."

All of the zooming in and out caught up with me at that moment. The colorful mental slap probably would have sent me to the ground if I hadn't already been sitting across the fire from Itachi. I still reeled at the blow. Color-sensing motion sickness, who knew?

Not to mention the wave of _this is wrong_ that bowled into me from Itachi's left arm. It felt like someone had slapped on a chunk of red and ground it in. With a jackhammer.

A glob of red was stuck inside of his arm and jamming his system. I gave the red a tiny, cautious prod. Itachi stiffened. "Stop that."

He hadn't winced, at least. I shrugged and tried to ignore the literal red flag. "Sorry. I'll, um, uh. . . ." Do what, exactly? I wanted to fix him. The urge was becoming ridiculous.

Itachi tossed me his whetstone.

No kidding. Sharp objects weren't likely to distract me from the whole _pulsing wound_ theme.

I did manage to spare enough attention to catch the stone, to my relief. My dignity could live another day.

"Your kunai are dull," Itachi said off-handedly.

I'd only ever had one or two out, so I didn't see how he could— Okay, snooping was in his job description. " _My_ stuff," I complained childishly. "Criminal," I added as lightly as I could.

"You're holding that wrong," was his reply.

"Yeah, I'm gonna cut myself on a _rock_ , Itachi- _sensei_."

"Hn." Liar.

"Don't you laugh at me!"

"I'm not."

"Liar! Ow!"

"Hn." If that wasn't laughing, I was a frog.

* * *

"Hey, um, is your arm any better?"

Flat look. Translation: no.

"Is it worse?"

Flat look. Translation: yes.

"Did I make it worse?"

"I doubt it." Hey! Where'd the look go?

"Guess what I'm about to suggest."

"No." Translation: I did. Shut up.

(But there was no force behind his replies.)

* * *

"Since you're just sticking around to enjoy my hospitality, you could let me try."

He tossed a folded leaf at me. A rice ball. Supper.

"The restaurant thanks you for the tip."

* * *

It was early evening when I snapped. "Look. I don't know what that arm feels like to you, but I can't stop feeling it or seeing it or whatever and it's not pleasant. So either you leave or you let me try to fix it or you kill me out of pity."

"Hn."

 _Don't slap him!_

"It smells like blood, too," I fumbled. No. No more platitudes. I narrowed my eyes and brandished them at my noncommittal acquaintance. "I'm serious, Itachi!" Whoops. Oops. Um. "San. Sensei? Something."

To my complete surprise, Itachi did not turn on his Sharingan at the language foul (or my sad attempt at putting my foot down). He simply looked at me. "You're upset."

I wiped away the frustrated tears and sighed. "I can't turn it off," I wanted to say. "Please," I wanted to beg, "I just want it to stop. The red stuff is pulsing. It gave me a headache hours ago." I couldn't turn off my sensing for more than a few seconds. The sensing had a 360° range, and when I couldn't get away from his injury. . . .

Itachi reached wordlessly for his bandage and began to unwrap it. Surprised, I moved closer to see if I could actually act on any of the ideas that had been running through my head all day.

The world receded to a heartbeat and a song.

Red and red.

Warmth and cold.

In other words, I don't really remember exactly what happened and I'm pretending that picturesque, abstract language will make up for it.

* * *

 _~I'm not dead! I just needed to switch gears between my stories for a while. I'm still working on all of them._

 _It's pretty funny how much effort editing the first draft of these chapters takes. This one actually took three days of working a few hours, then leaving alone for several days, then coming back and working again, losing the creative/serious drive, and waiting to do it all again._

 _I'm happy to have posted it, and I'm super happy that a few of you like this. I consider it a "niche fic." Probably doomed to obscurity, but not for lack of effort. I think I end up putting more effort into my niche stories! I've had such wonderful experiences with finding those rare gems myself that I couldn't_ not _try to add to the list of unique fics._

 _Reply to the anon ren7720: Thank you! It's pretty awesome to get feedback about this story. ;) See you around? _

_:D I always enjoy hearing what people think of my written work, so please, don't be shy! (This is the internet, and we don't have to make eye contact to be friends here.)_


	6. Journal I, iv

_._

* * *

 _Journal_ _I_

 _-written because there is no voice dictation here, my apartment, Konoha-_

* * *

The next morning came with all the gentle force of a blunted pickaxe. _My head . . . crave aspirin . . . ha. Wait_. My eyes snapped open.

I was on the ground. My coat was tangled around my legs. The blood from—

"Itachi?" My hands were coated in dry flakiness from when I'd put them on his arm. "Hello?" The colors were gone again. "Great." What had happened, exactly? Why was it morning?

I had lost myself for a while—hours, most likely—in the mixture of red and colorless chakra that was Itachi's arm.

Wait, wait, wait.

I'd really figured out how to pull the red chakra out of his arm?

Wow, go desperate me.

The thoughts of last night's events being a dream vanished when I remembered just how much direct contact had been involved. Nope, that kind of awkwardness couldn't be made up. Although luckily for me, I'd been too busy using my fingers as conductors for anything to sink in at the time. I'm not sure I even remembered who I was touching by the time I'd pulled out the first thread of red chakra.

When I'd finished, we'd eaten supper with a lot less enthusiasm than . . . right, he was bleeding out from a reopened wound. I'd helped him tie it off. And then I'd collapsed (not on his shoulder, thankfully) and he'd dropped my coat on me. And then presumably left before the sun came up.

There was a small stack of folded leaves lying beside the dying fire. I crawled over to it and opened one. Rice balls. Underneath the food was a leather bag.

Well, good. A water skin might be a fair exchange for the departed colors. If my hunch was right, I deserved more than a water skin. That stuff had been spreading. Its edges had faded to pink and . . . no, I didn't want to think about it.

I didn't want to remember the way Itachi had tensed (shuddered) as I had pulled both his and the foreign chakra out of his system.

I wanted to cry.

* * *

"Tami-chan."

I stripped the bush of its last few berries and tucked them into my sash. "Hi." I cocked my head at the bush and thought through my next action. Pocketknife or kunai? I unfolded my pocketknife and started hacking off a long strip of bark.

You couldn't walk five minutes without finding an old kunai hidden somewhere among these trees, but nothing beat the feeling of my own knife. Plus it had been a gift. While I considered my kunai collection a gift of sorts, I couldn't say the old jutsu scars in the forest carried quite the same meaning as wrapping paper or Christmas morning.

I laid the strip of bark on a clean patch of moss and surveyed the bush for another likely contribution.

"You need to suppress your chakra immediately."

"Why should I listen to you?" I asked, smiling as I reached for an even longer branch.

A hand landed on my shoulder and my heart leapt into my throat and died a sudden death. "You're not—" I ducked out of the grip and threw myself away.

Funny, because he sounded and looked just like Itachi.

There was something fishy going on here!

"I am a clone," the Itachi lookalike stated. Oh. No wonder. . . . Also, maybe I should have looked at him first.

"Is that why your chakra feels fake?" I asked. (Which was super weird. Human chakra registering as _clear_ was odd on its own. I didn't need to know that _clear_ could seem wrong.)

"My chakra is not—" He paused and looked at me. "My true self and an acquaintance are coming this way. If you do not hide your chakra presence immediately the consequences will be severe."

"Acquaintance? Who?"

"A shinobi who absorbs abnormal chakra as a hobby," said the Itachi, confirming my fear.

I stamped down on my chakra _viciously_.

The Itachi nodded and disappeared in a dramatic puff of smoke.

 _I am so dead. At least Itachi went rogue to protect someone. Kisame's got a pet sword that eats people!_

Well, the least I could do would be find a tree. Except didn't ninjas travel through the treetops? I should be fine on the ground, then. Except . . . bother.

 _Okay. I'll hide in a tree. If they come by on the ground, I'll be safe. If they come through the trees, I'll be hidden. If they don't come close at all, I'll spend the night in it. Better safe than sorry._

I must have the worst luck in the world, because they camped twenty feet away. Seriously. Itachi and his friend the shark just waltzed up and hunkered down.

 _His clone tracked me_ , I realized. _But he could have had it kill me or simply avoided me_. My thoughts focused miserably on the latter option. If only, if only.

 _Wouldn't this be a great time for my stomach to growl? No, don't think about that._

On the plus side, I'd hidden my possessions up in the tree with me and I'd left the food within reach. In theory, I could eat supper. In practice, well. I was used to hunger these days.

The sky grew dark at an abysmally slow pace. I curled into a ball and eavesdropped on the Akatsuki for lack of a better way to occupy myself.

Something, something . . . finally killed that guy . . . annoying jōnin . . . Itachi volunteered for first watch.

"He's asleep."

I stiffened and looked around for Itachi, who was crouching on the branch beside me. Unfair. "Why'd you come?" I whispered back. "You'd better not be hurt again."

"Hn," said Itachi in a possibly-slightly-amused way. "Follow me." He dropped to the ground and walked toward the campsite.

I slithered hesitantly down the trunk and tiptoed after. Itachi explained the situation a bit more when we parked next to the shinobi he'd warned me about. "He's asleep. I placed him in a genjutsu."

I stared cautiously at the large body lying by the fire. The giant man was snoring. The sound was frankly kind of deafening. I cleared my throat. "So can I let the colors back?"

"Yes."

The colors flooded into me noisily, erasing the dull ache of separation and other picturesque ideas my head always whined about when I couldn't sense chakra. I staggered. "'Tachi!"

His dark eyes flickered in the firelight as he met my gaze. "You—he—"

Itachi had a small streak of red on him somewhere, but Kisame's back was swarming with the stuff. "I want you to heal him," Itachi stated.

I swallowed. One of my friend's hands was bandaged. His arm was untainted. "Let me fix your hand first."

"So that you can faint?"

My cheeks flamed. "Shut up! I can handle a stupid scratch. And if I _do_ faint, then I'm gonna make sure that you're around to stop him from killing me."

"You think he would kill you?"

 _Why, yes. Kisame of the Akatsuki, S-ranked criminal, will kill me on sight. I know this because of course I know all, Uchiha_. Instead, I called him out. "My apologies if your clone sent itself."

Itachi gave me his hand and I unwrapped the bandage. "Magic meat grater strikes again?" The back of his hand was skinned. I flicked the red into the air and watched it disperse. So far so good.

"Okay, now what?"

Itachi walked over to his partner and pulled off the cloak. Sharkface's torso was a plethora of bandages. Itachi knelt beside him, sliced through the layers of cloth, and peeled them back.

Whoa.

"I've had worse," I announced (lied) cheerily, and added, "If he wakes up, I'm going to kill you."

"He won't," said Itachi. For some reason, the nerves in my stomach relaxed.

I put my left hand squarely on the bloody, tainted mess that was Kisame's back and let the red chakra flow to my fingers. From there, I used my right hand to pull the chakra into the air. Sort of like sewing. Just scarier. Not to mention the red chakra's habit of sticking to _my_ fingers. Yikes!

My own back was aching by the time I finished. I wiped my bloodied hands on my pants and stood up. "'Kay, it's all out."

I yawned and watched as Itachi started covering the wound again. "D'ya think his skin would have turned purple?" I yawned a second time and arched my spine, oddly aware that my chakra perception was falling away. This was not a flattering time for my mental state. "Can you even see the colors, Itachi-san?"

"No," said Itachi. His eyes flashed as the firelight dipped and flared. "You should leave now."

I had stopped scavenging to hide in a tree for hours. I had spent who-knows-how-long digging evil chakra out of a criminal's back. I glared. "Think again, genius. I'm tired and I was here first."

"Hn."

"Don't you 'hn' me," I snarled. "I'm gonna lose the colors because I saved your sorry hide. So you listen and listen good, mister. I don't take orders. I don't care if I wake up dead, I'm going to sleep and that's _final_."

"Of course it is," agreed Itachi as he nonchalantly made a shadow clone. I hissed angrily.

"Next time, warn me! Don't make me hide myself and then just park right next to me! And don't use some underhanded tactic on me, either!"

I'm pretty sure that different words would have had a better effect, but for the life of me, I couldn't come up with any.

"Hn." I glared at him, feeling the clone circle around behind me. I growled and twitched at its chakra with the last of my ability. Itachi's eyes flashed red. Sharingan.

I blinked, trying to gather the colors. The colors had left. _I'm falling_. . . . I was asleep before the word came to mind, but the description was apt enough. I had taken out the clone.

Sorry not sorry.

Ha!

I fell.

* * *

"Wake, Tami-chan."

The voice was so unexpectedly close to my ear that I did a double-take. And then I opened an eye to find the owner of said voice extremely close by. "Augh!" I shrieked. "Let me down!"

"Hn."

I flailed. "Let me down, you nasty clone!" How did I know he was a clone, you ask? Because he was smirking, that's why.

"Your sensing is back?"

"No," I said petulantly. "I don't want to ride piggyback. I want to walk."

"Hn," said the clone, letting go of my legs. I jumped off like he had rabies. Blushing.

 _Oh, no. Please tell me I was not sleeping on him_. I could imagine it all too well: him running at ninja speed, my head lolling on his shoulder. And drooling or something. My front would be pressed against his back. _Let his cloak be thick, let his cloak be thick_.

I don't think those are supposed to be the priorities when one is kidnapped.

"You should learn to use your chakra," the clone said. "And you should hide it when your sensing does not work."

I yawned. "No kidding. Any other genius ideas?"

Hollow-Itachi looked thoughtful. "Practice throwing your kunai. Run laps. Build up your physical strength. Do—"

I threw up my hands. "Okay, I get it. Maybe I'll try. Will that satisfy you?"

"No," said the clone, before dissolving in a cough of smoke. The word "puff" doesn't apply when it sounds like a Pikachu sneezing.

So. Not only did Itachi view me as his personal medic, he also cared enough to keep me alive. Which meant either:

A) I was useful enough to keep around,

B) I might someday be useful,

C) He was undecided, or,

D) He liked me enough not to kill me.

From the anime, I knew that Itachi did not kill for the sake of killing, did not fight for the sake of fighting, and did not care for the Akatsuki. He cared for his brother and for Konoha.

Huh. What direction was I headed, exactly?

I'd bet it was away from the Akatsuki.

* * *

 _~Wow, so I was hit by a ten day writing streak in this story after a few weeks of close to no writing whatsoever. This isn't my main focus story,_ but I will take it _. Too bad I still have to edit before the upcoming chapters are ready to post._

 _This is my least favorite of the chapters written so far, but I was tired of staring at it. You're welcome. :P_

 _Reply to the anonymous ren7720: How did you read the new chapter so quickly? Just over three hours and wham, you found it._

 _Okay, so other chapters are in the works! And we will get back to the "present day" / Boruto era before too long. I really like how the present stuff is working out. I can't wait to get it to you guys!_


	7. Journal I, v

_._

* * *

 _Journal_ _I_

 _-written from the empty park again, Konoha-_

* * *

I'll cut a long story short and emphasize that my foraging skills were subpar, chakra was more bother than it was worth, and Itachi was the only thing keeping me sane.

Itachi was also the only _notable_ thing during my whole time alone. There are plenty of interesting moments: discoveries of edible plants and jury-rigging, a long day with a fever, brushes with death. Sitting curled up on my park bench in Konoha, none of those experiences are what matters.

Maybe it's because Itachi was a friend. I still miss my family terribly. He was the first person I saw here, and regardless of his reputation and affiliations, he's more of a link to them than anyone else is.

I think it's deeper than that. There are precious few people that I have an instant bond with. I had two friends like that in my home world. They were the people I dreamed of reunition with nearly every time I fell asleep in this world. It was like some frequency ran beneath their interactions with me. _You know this person. No matter what happens, this person is safe. One day you may grow out of this friendship, but you will always be able to return_.

I guess I'm confessing that I miss Itachi a lot more than I should. I'll probably never see him again, either, and what's worse is that I know he's going to die in just a few short years. My friends from home have promising futures and a world where violent deaths were unusual. I can't give them sage advice, but at least I can rest somewhat easily even though I don't know how their lives will play out. After befriending Itachi, I can't think about him without a sick feeling in my stomach. He's more real than they are now. He'll continue to be so. It's, well, dreadful.

Have you ever met someone that you just wanted to get to know but can never ever talk to again?

That sounds so stupid when I write it down.

Ugh, it still looks stupid.

Maybe I shouldn't embarrass myself by recounting the last time I met Itachi.

Only that time was different. We were _friends_. It was as "just hanging out" as anything here gets. And—

Jiraiya's coming, more later.

* * *

.

* * *

 _-written from my apartment after a tiring day of training, Konoha_ -

* * *

"Tami-chan."

I panted, but I didn't pretend I was capable of more effort than that.

Itachi took note of the fact that I wasn't getting up from my fetal position in the leaves and dirt and waited until I'd caught my breath. "Are you injured?"

I shook my head and wished that I were. But no, I didn't need an injury to be in this much pain. I had this lovely thing called chakra sensing. Or so I assumed. The pain didn't seem to stem _from_ anything.

Itachi watched me a bit awkwardly when the terrible fiery sensation died down and I finally rolled to my knees. "Do you know what caused that?" he asked.

I explained that beyond the episodes' happening more and more frequently, I had no idea what could be causing them. We troubleshooted that for a few minutes. It wasn't physical exertion, diet, or chakra exertion, and from what I could tell, it wasn't the opposite, either. It was a mystery.

Aside from my niggling idea that this world's chakra was finally recognizing me as foreign and trying to kill me. Or that my body couldn't cope with this world. Only I should have died right away, then, right?

I asked Itachi how his friend was doing. Itachi said that I didn't need to worry about that.

I spent a minute worrying about it.

"I missed you," I admitted after that. "You were gone longer this time. Not that that matters or anything, I'm just a bit lonely." I kicked at an offensive clod of dirt and wondered how long before I'd say another really obvious statement. "Was it hard to find me?"

Probably not, since I couldn't control my chakra sensing when I was curled in a ball trying not to scream.

Itachi shrugged without shrugging. "No." At my wince, he explained, "I used the tracking seal I placed on you."

I blinked. "I don't remember that."

He nodded. "You were asleep."

Well, that filled me with joy. All the same, I couldn't _do_ anything about it, and he'd already seen me helpless on the ground today. There weren't many more uncomfortable topics to cover, in my book.

I still hated the fact that I'd been touched without knowing about it.

"Relax," he suggested. I rolled my eyes. The action triggered some sort of wry expression in him, and then I found myself laughing.

And for some reason, he decided to stick around for the rest of the day. We had a lot of fun.

I laughed at my bad aim with kunai, and he patiently showed me how my wrists were getting in the way. I'm still resolute that I can't hit targets I can't physically see. He has a Sharingan. That's different.

Itachi had already described how normal chakra worked, and I'd dutifully spent some time trying to stick leaves to myself during my days alone. When I used that practice to crumble mint leaves open-palmed over our lunches, I think Itachi revised his opinion of me. I just smiled and asked if he wanted to see something I'd figured out.

"See," I said, grinning like someone drunk on friendship, "I figured that since I can utilize both the colors and my chakra, there's no reason I can't use both, so I," and here I put my words to action, "glue them together and use them to walk up trees."

It shouldn't have been possible. I didn't have enough control over my personal chakra. I should not have been able to sense the tree's chakra, let alone pull on the colored chakra and my own at the same time.

"Have you tried anything else?" asked Itachi.

"No," I lied promptly. I was still grinning widely.

He blinked his eyes into the Sharingan and told me to keep walking.

Um, nope! "Nuh-uh, buddy. Explain what you're doing with your eyes, 'cause if I fall because of you, I'm not gonna be thrilled."

"The Sharingan allows me to see the color and flow of chakra." Huh. Well, it was true. And it sounded handy. (Colors! I knew what those were like.)

I walked.

"You're leaving footprints," Itachi said eventually.

"Of course I leave footprints," I retorted half-heartedly. "It's how normal people track other people, though I suppose I shouldn't . . ." I trailed off.

 _Those eyes are sorta creepy_.

"Grouch." I reached out to the colors around me, concentrating on the places my feet had touched. Sure enough, there were smudges of my chakra along the trunk. Intrigued, I traced a finger along the bark and drew a smiley face.

Oh, boy. How cool was that?

I drew a little stick figure blowing a fireball. One throwing a shuriken. _Ooh, I bet I can get it to animate_.

Itachi (bless his poor soul), bore with me for the rest of the afternoon. Occasionally he'd drag me over to try some new chakra exercise. What was I, some experiment? I wish I'd been able to do most of the things he suggested, but I could only really interact with the nature chakra I saw as colors. Although _that_ was a funny side note. His Sharingan differentiated between human chakra but saw nature chakra as largely the same color. My chakra sensing saw nature chakra as a whole rainbow and didn't give human chakra a color. Weird stuff.

But the sun set, and Itachi pushed away the fun I could tell he was having and told me he had to leave. "I've stayed too long," he said. Then, "You're staring at me."

"I'm returning the favor," I replied serenely. "You've been staring at me all day."

He met my eyes for a few seconds before his sense of duty (or awkwardness) won out. "Goodbye, Tami-chan."

I nodded. "See ya."

And he was gone. Only I could still feel something at the edge of my range of sensing.

His clone came while I was eating supper. It watched me with that creepy, red-eyed stare while I sorted through my supplies and found that I was out of dried meat. I went through my things three more times before I realized what I was doing. Except when I stopped, I was even more unsure what to do. A clone was watching me, and while it was only a representation of my friend, I knew that they still shared the same willpower. Anything the clone did _was_ in essence Itachi. And Itachi watching my nighttime ritual was something I found I very much did not like.

"Go to sleep," Itachi ordered.

I froze. _I didn't scout out a tree while it was light because I was spying on the clone like an idiot. Dummy_. Well, if I concentrated, there were certain to be a few wide branches nearby. Since I could sense trees and all.

"Sleep," the clone reminded me. Bossy thing. Fine.

I unfolded my coat, smoothed it out, and flopped onto it. _He wants to sit there, he can sit there. No skin off my teeth_. If he tried anything, which I doubted Itachi would, all I had to do was punch him. Probably. I'd gotten rid of a clone before. A punch or a pull would get rid of this one, too.

Content with this reassurance of safety, I drifted into the realm of sleep.

Morning, when it arrived, heralded three things: the sun was in my eyes, the clone was still there, and my bones didn't ache.

"Your chakra molds you to the ground," clonie supplied. That was plausible.

I checked the ground for leftover chakra, but my sensing didn't extend that far. "That's lucky."

"Dangerous," he corrected. "I am going to disperse now."

"Sure. Say hi to Itachi for me?"

Poof.

The smoke cleared and revealed a small, plain, wooden comb. Not realizing that this would be the last I'd see of Itachi . . . ever, I whooped.

* * *

 _~Coming soon: action! Any guesses on what might happen next here? I'll also be moving on to the present-day part of the story soon (chapter 10 or so) and would be happy to hear about what you guys would like to see there._

 _I've added chapter titles that will show you how everything fits chronologically. Everything's pretty clear right now, but I imagine that the option to read scenes chronologically will come in handy for some people._

 _Reply to the anonymous ren7720: We're going to have to find a better conversation topic, huh?_

 _Thank you for reading, following or favoriting, and reviewing! It's really encouraging to hear from you all. :)_


	8. Journal I, vi

_._

* * *

 __ _Journal_ _I_

 _-written from an overgrown graveyard that doesn't deserve the neglect, Konoha-_

* * *

When I first met Itachi, I was scared but ultimately realized I shouldn't have been.

When I first met Tsunade, the opposite was true: I was scared and realized right off the bat that I should have been.

Perhaps the difference lay in the entrance. Itachi had wandered up to my campsite.

Tsunade plowed _through_ my campsite and grabbed the missing nin that had dropped in by the scruff of his neck. From what I gather, she was the reason he'd landed about twenty feet from my campfire.

I'm not too clear on the details. One of those hello-your-body-is-now-on-fire episodes had incapacitated me during their fight. I mostly remember hearing the thump and trying to focus on the mass of blonde that took out the poor missing nin.

Not that he was poor. He'd been killing children.

I rolled onto my back in time to see Tsunade hoist the unconscious man over one shoulder. I breathed in sharply. Tsunade is rather iconic, in my opinion. And that's without mentioning her impossible strength.

The blonde woman scowled. "What's wrong with you?"

"Um. . . ."

She dropped her burden and walked over. One of her hands lit up with a green light. I flinched. Her eyes narrowed.

 _I'm dead_ , I thought, reading the look on her face. But I was wrong.

She crouched down next to me and met my eyes with a gentle expression that was frankly confusing. "You're okay now," she said softly. "My name is Senju Tsunade. I'm a medic and I just want to help you. Did that man hurt you?"

I glanced from her face to the unconscious man's before I could sort out an answer.

People don't just fall out of the sky every day. Especially not when I've been alone for weeks, save Itachi.

"Ah," she said. "That man is a murderer who is going to face justice for his crimes. Do you—"

Her face twisted. I looked down to discover that her glowing hand was hovering next to my shoulder. So much for _asking_ me if medical chakra made me uneasy (to which the answer was yes, yes it did when _that_ was her reaction to using it).

The blonde woman jerked her other hand's fingers into an odd shape and slammed that palm to the ground. Ink stained the ground before a small slug popped into existence. "Get Shizune," the woman snapped. "Tell her it's an emergency." She hissed and snatched her grounded hand into the air before sending it to my other shoulder. The bottom of my vision glowed green.

I frowned thoughtfully. Did she mean me? I didn't think I was that unhealthy—

It could have been Tsunade's doing, but my vision suddenly fragmented into a hundred black spots and I passed out.

* * *

Don't get me wrong, I liked Tsunade. The brusqueness just took a bit of getting used to, that was all.

Don't get me wrong, I liked Itachi. The starvation had just been a bitter pill to swallow, that was all.

Oh, dear, there I go off on that "I miss Itachi" tangent my thoughts _still_ keep cycling through. I can forgive myself for it. After twenty-three days alone, the twenty-one days of waiting for his next visit really did something to my outlook on life. It made me _hate_ the thought of military families . . . and that's just one of the many jobs with long absences I can think of from home.

I could _never_ marry a shinobi. I'll state that outright. Until cell phones are invented here, it's a flat no. Which rules out a good ninety percent of the males I interact with.

Itachi, you did this to me. My diaries back home never went off track this much (They also never dealt with entering a new world, so I suppose a certain amount of deviation is permissible).

"You're a fool," Tsunade barked when I woke up for the third time.

I kept my eyes shut and wished her away.

The first time I'd woken up screaming. Tsunade's hands had been on my stomach and a second, dark-haired woman had dashed over to hold down my shoulders. I remembered meeting Tsunade easily enough. It was the pain that threw me. I'd had nightmares about being found by people here and my mind grasped at them desperately. "Itachi!" I shouted.

I was blissfully unconscious before I could realize my error and see if my torturers recognized the name. My throat was pretty raw.

I was being spoon-fed when I next awoke, which was great fun. I spat the warm broth out of my mouth and over the person feeding me before I even realized I was awake again. _That_ was embarrassing. I coughed and apologized as the woman calmly reached for a clean hand towel. "It's all right," she assured me.

It was not! Nothing here was right!

"My name is Shizune," she continued gently. "The poisoned chakra is out of your system now. Tsunade-shisō will start chakra therapy with you soon. Lie back and rest, please." She wiped herself off with her towel and eyed the small dribble of liquid my actions had graced me with. Eww.

I stared at her helplessly. I wanted to protest or ask what she was talking about, but my old friends pain and headache returned to clamor for my attention.

"What's your name?" she asked.

I couldn't quite concentrate to tell her, and she took pity on me and left the room so I could cry myself back to sleep.

And now I was awake for the third time, lucid, with just a trace of a headache kicking despondently at my skull. I blinked at the pretty blonde woman. "Full of what?" I asked neutrally.

She looked at me sideways. Her lips pursed. "I didn't save your life to listen to puns," she said crossly. She wasn't irritated, though. Something about her expression said that on another day, she might have laughed at my careful ignorance. "What clan are you from?"

I must have looked too confused. She went for a different angle. "When did you poison your chakra?"

This was simple enough. "I didn't," I said.

Honey colored eyes narrowed into a glare that would have made Itachi wince. "Don't lie to me. It only spreads by direct contact. A clan child with a chakra condition like yours would never do something that stupid on purpose. When were you poisoned?"

I counted back to the night I'd been exposed to Kisame's very broad, ripped-open back. "Eight days plus however long I've been here," I said quietly.

"And how did it happen?" Suspicion bled out of her.

I wilted. "I tried to heal someone," I said, wishing I'd never woken up that first time. "I didn't have a choice." The memory of my favorite red chakra wagged its tail in my face. "It was . . . pretty nasty."

I leaned back into the pillow I'd never take for granted again and grimaced. Tsunade's face clouded over.

"You were forced to heal someone?" she asked. "Who was it?"

"Oh, um—" _Kisame_ , my head reported dutifully. _Itachi asked_. I mulled the situation over. "A man named Itachi," I said, ratting my friend out in favor of succinctness. "Once we got over the first impression, he wasn't so bad."

"Did he give you a family name?" Tsunade demanded.

Of the Southern Isles?

Props to me for ruining the gravity of this conversation.

"No, I don't think so," I said. "And—" wow, to think this had never occurred to me before, "he had a headband with a scratched leaf on it the first night, but he never wore it again after that."

"Forehead protector."

"Um, okay. He had black hair, pretty long. Black eyes. He was tall, maybe about five nine?" (It occurs to me now that this world uses the metric system. I wonder what Tsunade thought of that description?)

"And he had poisoned chakra," Tsunade said flatly. "Which he then demanded you heal. How accommodating of you."

Hindsight tells me that Tsunade's thought process was cycling through a lot of information. Her words' mixed signals are historically not meant to be trusted or taken at face value. I didn't realize that yet, and I couldn't figure out if I should be offended or not.

"I'm sorry, is healing people wrong?"

Tsunade fished a bottle out of a drawer and unscrewed the cap. The sharp smell of alcohol filled the room. She padded out of the small room I was staying in and returned with a tiny bowl. A mere saucer, really. I watched silently as she poured herself a drink, tossed it back, and repeated the whole affair.

"You need a bigger cup," I muttered.

I winced at the harsh guffaw.

When the half-empty bottle was gone, the blonde woman's attention returned to me. I let my eyes drift to the dull blue fabric of my comforter. It was dotted with faded butterflies. It was warm, which would have been nice in the winter. I wiggled my toes frustratedly and wondered what I was wearing under the covers.

"He knew you could heal him," Tsunade began, "why was that? I only know of four people who can heal chakra with that kind of poison in it, and none of them have an apprentice that matches your description. Where do you come from?"

"I, um," I said intelligently.

"Uchiha Itachi is one of the most recognizable missing-nin in the Five Nations," Tsunade added disparagingly.

I kind of doubted that. Itachi was unassuming enough to probably get under any radar. He'd gotten under mine. . . .

"He murdered all but one member of his clan when he was only thirteen," Tsunade said just in case I'd missed the "wanted criminal" side of her enlightening revelation.

 _He's adopted? No, shut up, brain, you're getting in the way. There are no superheroes here_ . . . although one day there was bound to be an avenger.

Tsunade continued along in the same vein until I'd been adequately cowed. I didn't want to face that glare any longer. Tsunade gets her way a lot. I have a chilling glare myself, but unlike her, I choose to employ reservation. I relaxed into my pillow and considered the death statistics of hindsight. Tsunade got to the point.

"How did he know you could heal him?"

I had a backstory. I had several, actually, ranging from war-torn orphan to raised in solitude by a migrant foreigner. None of them accounted for that little healing in the woods.

I hesitated. Not because I was having trouble picking a lie. I knew how to lie, I had brothers my age and my life to safeguard. No, I simply realized that _I didn't know, either_. Thinking about it later, I doubt that Itachi knew any more than I did when he first met me. In fact, I'm certain of that. But Tsunade thought my friend had ulterior motives, and her suspicion made me paranoid, too. "I don't know," I admitted with complete, confused honesty. "I didn't know about it myself."

I frowned, not liking the implications I'd just been bombarded with. My slight headache tapped the edge of my attention. _Go away_ , I hissed. _I need to think_.

Tsunade frowned, too, nastily. "How long did they experiment on you?"

Say what?

"The evidence is all through your body. The chakra in your blood failed to erase the traces. And don't pretend you aren't half-starved."

"I prefer half-full," I said without considering what my mouth might be up to while my thoughts buzzed. Traces of what? There hadn't been experiments. But—were there traces of things from back home? Surely something was different enough to be noteworthy. And what was that about blood?

Tsunade eyed me knowingly. "There's a glass on the night table. Drink it."

"You're not a shinobi," she said once I'd sipped my way to the last drops of the precious water. "Your chakra abnormality is clearly genetic. You've barely, if ever, accessed your chakra. And yet you escaped from your captors."

I glanced at the floor guiltily. The first statements, at least, were probably true. She was a professional in this world's medical field. I was a girl so bad at survival skills that I'd been mistaken for a dying prisoner. "That's not exactly true," I said. "I didn't escape." The truth was right on my lips—hey, she probably wouldn't hit a recovering invalid—but preservation got in the way. "Itachi saved me."

Well. That was true in more than one way.

Tsunade had a funny expression on her face that told me that now was my time to fulfil my share of the conversation. Ah, it was nice to be able to read people again! Too bad that the ability went both ways.

I liked Tsunade's suggestion, though.

"It's been forty-four days since I last saw my family," I said. "So far as I can tell. I had a fever for a while. And like you said, there are things in my system. But I, um, well, I don't really know what happened. I woke up alone . . . no one explained anything to me. I was alone for so long. There was barely any food." I frowned into my empty cup and considered that overwhelming depression. I _had_ been imprisoned. Itachi _had_ saved me. It was a comforting thought. "They never _asked_ me anything, either . . . they never said a word." _They_ also hadn't existed. Eh. I put the cup down and finished, "But Itachi asked if I wanted to come with him."

Tsunade offered no censure.

My eyes stung like the traitors they were. "He saved me."

It was strange. She'd looked so angry a minute ago and now there was a sad, liquid kind of pity to her gaze.

"He didn't force me to help him," I confessed. "He didn't have to."

Let's be honest here. Kisame was the only one I'd been asked to heal, and I would have healed him anyway. He hadn't been very scary in his unconsciousness.

"Of course he didn't," Tsunade agreed, sounding thoughtful. "Now. You, young lady, are still too weak for my liking. Lay back. We're going to do some therapy."

I got the feeling that I wouldn't like this next part.

Too bad I was right.

* * *

 _~When I first wrote the chapter, Tsunade bit her thumb to summon her slug . . . which didn't work, she's still too afraid of blood to do that. On the other hand, I can't see Tsunade_ not _figuring out a way to summon Katsuyu regardless. If anyone knows differently, please share your knowledge with me!_

 _According to my timeline, Tami's actually been around for 46 days._

 _I love hearing what you guys think, so let me know if you liked the introduction of Tsunade and Shizune! It's my first time writing either one, and happily enough, I really like writing them. Especially Tsunade._

 _My favorite line is "You need a bigger cup." Does anyone else think Tsunade may as well get one? Or perchance have a different line that appealed?_

 _Anonymous replies: ren7720 (Well, that's kind of fun. Things that are similar to real life - as in, it's believable, not as in boring - appeal to me.)_

 _Until next time!_


	9. Journal I, vii

__.__

* * *

 _Journal I_

 _-written from the stone discomfort of the Yondaime's head as a beautiful sunset steals away my light, Konoha-_

* * *

Tsunade and Shizune liked me. A lot.

Or, when I let my mind wander—Tsunade and Shizune really wanted to keep my kekkei genkai around. But my mind wasn't really accurate.

Tsunade sat me down, what, two weeks? into my stay in their apartment. "We're leaving," she said.

"Oh," I said stupidly. Tonton was sitting on my lap at the time. She yelped in pig language and stared up at me in surprise.

"Sorry, Tonton," I told her. "If you weren't so perceptive, you wouldn't find me so weird. . . ."

That pig could read minds. And she liked me a lot, for some reason. She'd taken to sleeping in my bed. Good thing pigs of her breed don't shed.

"Where are you going?" I asked with dull curiosity.

"I said _we_ are leaving," Tsunade barked. "We're going to Tanzaku. So pack your things."

Tonton chirped at me happily.

I mulled over current events during our two-day trek to our new residence. Tsunade had found me as she'd been hunting down a murderous missing nin to get some spending money. She'd saved my life with emergency medical spazz, and I'd been imprisoned in their second bedroom.

I'd picked up a nice case of chakra poisoning from Itachi and Kisame. Healed now. The problem was with me, really. Everyone in this world—everything that lived, and then there was natural energy on top of that—had chakra. Chakra was produced in the chakra coils, an organ that somehow fit into the human body. No chakra meant death.

Back home, we'd had blood to keep us alive. There was blood here, too. It was important, but chakra took first place. And that was why Tsunade took such an interest in me. I had a chakra system (phew, otherwise I'd be dead). I had a chakra system stuffed full of blood cells. Which made things very interesting.

The pain throughout my body, for instance, was caused by my body's three hundred and sixty-one tenketsu points' filtering that blood.

Tsunade's biggest concern, at least as far as she told me, was that "shorting out" my kekkei genkai meant instantly using up the chakra collected in that blood. When most of my chakra collected into the blood cells running through my chakra system, yeah, that was a problem. My body has an emergency chakra supply, but I wouldn't be able to use it to get away. Or so I surmise. Tsunade liked to use medical and shinobi jargon with Shizune every five seconds.

It was a wonder I was alive and Tsunade had taken me on as a personal project. She wanted to heal me.

Apparently I was the case of the year.

Literally, because Tsunade was largely retired from the medical field at present.

There were so many moments during my weeks with the two of them. When I'd been alone, the days had blurred together. Those precious moments with human company were ingrained in my memory. My memories with Tsunade and Shizune, by way of contrast, fought their way into a big, oblivious snarl.

Tsunade spent hours, sometimes more than once a day, examining my wayward chakra system. She was patient and funny and kind enough to distract me from the pain the sessions often brought. I hate pain. It's embarrassing. And it hurts.

Shizune was really sweet. She's sensible and has what patience and empathy Tsunade lacks. Shizune is the one who gets stuff done. She's also the one who held me the one night I gave in and wept. Tsunade is the loud and flashy one, but Shizune is the background friend, because she has always been there for me.

I was an invalid at first. I was too weak to get out of bed, I was half starved, I was by all accounts half dead. They saved me regardless.

And somewhere between their quiet discussion of who to send me to upon my recovery and Tsunade's aggressive "shut up and pack up," they'd changed their opinion of me. I don't know why. I was purely ornamental. Although Tonton liked me more every day. Silly pig.

We had to hike through the forest to travel to Tanzaku. I loved it. The only problem was that I wanted to sleep in a tree like I was used to. Tonton didn't want to sleep in a tree. Shizune pointed out that Tonton had a bed of her own, but the pig was insistent. If Tonton didn't get to curl up next to me, no one was going to get any sleep. In the end, Tsunade pulled me out of the tree by an ankle, and that was that.

Tsunade got _her_ way the next night. We stayed in a hotel. She stayed out gambling. Shizune and I exchanged glances the whole time Tsunade was gone. I'd forgotten how _fun_ exchanging glances is. It's stress relief and camaraderie in one sarcastic package.

We settled into Tanzaku two days later. The journey would have gone much faster if I'd known how to use chakra to run, but Tsunade refused to let me try. I was starting to get real tired of all of her rules.

So when I was offered a choice of gambling with Tsunade and Shizune or wandering the town with Tonton, I definitely took Tonton. It's weird how much they trust her. It's also weird how smart she is.

"Find the woods, Tonton. I can feel the forest, but it's harder to pick out a good route to get to it. Would you mind?"

Tonton chirped and ran off. I scampered after her, trying not to draw undue attention to myself. Old women, especially, tended to tell me that I needed to eat more. Well, at least some of them cared.

People had colorless chakra, but Tonton's chakra was distinct enough to pick out from the masses'. I followed her into the trees. Only I couldn't _catch_ her, so I ended up chasing her around the stair-steps this world's architecture liked to put between the trees. As I've said, silly pig.

Tonton stopped eventually, and we turned around to go back. Only there was a problem. Tanzaku was built around a castle. The castle was in the center of the town and visible from pretty much everywhere.

The castle was missing.

That probably means that running toward the missing castle was bad. Oh, well.

Tonton's nose led us straight to a bar. We walked in, only to be accosted by an employee insisting that animals were not allowed in the establishment. Tsunade set the poor man straight before I even knew she was there. I just shrugged and lifted Tonton onto the bench Shizune was sitting on and slipped into the opposite side of the booth.

"Nice of you to join us," Tsunade slurred.

I rolled my eyes—the woman had three settings: drunk, losing, and passive-aggressive temper—and stayed quiet. Tsunade called for more drinks. She offered one to me, but let's just say that after seeing what alcohol did to her, I didn't want any part in it. I leaned against the wall and watched the colors trickle slowly through the ground beneath us. Nothing like watching dirt.

Some guys at a table across the room were describing the world's largest snake, which had apparently leveled the Tanzaku Castle . . . wait. I knew this one. I looked up.

And Jiraiya and Naruto appeared in the doorway on cue.

Insert conversation.

Talking to Tsunade when she's drunk is like trying to back up downhill. You can get the result you want, but only if you've got a negative goal in mind.

So, it went like this: I scooted into the corner, and Tonton followed me. I then did my best to stay invisible as the white-headed man walked up to our table and sat himself down. There was smalltalk about a guy named Orochimaru (this was the man Tsunade had first assumed I'd been imprisoned by). Then Jiraiya offered Tsunade the position of Hokage.

I don't even know why they bothered looking disappointed when she inevitably turned him down. Of _course_ she did! Tsunade had problems. Orochimaru had approached her today, highlighting those problems. She'd turned to her friend sake to avoid the problems for as long as possible.

And now they were back. It was a struggle she'd have to win. Or, like with my depression at losing my family . . . well, I was confident she'd get past it.

I just didn't expect her inner conflict to be _so painful_.

Pain means that we lash out. She lashed out at everyone pretty nicely with some nasty comments about the previous Hokages. Naruto tried to jump across the table. Wrong move, Naruto. Because Tsunade rose to the bait. She entered cat mode and looked for a fight. She got one.

Tsunade clapped me on the shoulder as she got up. I shrugged it off. Rising to the bait didn't interest me today. I didn't want to watch her cream Naruto into a blonde puddle. I just wanted her haze of depression to be over with.

Tsunade creamed Naruto. She took perverse pleasure in smashing his dreams, but the boy refused to go down. He attempted some technique that the Yondaime had invented (I remember that said Yondaime was Naruto's father) that made a big spiral of chakra. _That_ was cool.

If I could get little stick figures to move, I could make spirals with nature chakra, too, right?

Jiraiya sidled next to me during the short fight. "Tsunade keeps good company these days, I see."

"Shizune's great, yeah," I agreed. I mean, I was all but Tsunade's half-starved pet. Jiraiya wasn't blind.

"What's your name?" he asked. Ah, too bad. Deflecting didn't seem to work around suspicious shinobi.

I gave him my name and told him that I hadn't been around for very long. Heh, literally. I smiled at the private joke. I tend to smile and laugh at little thoughts like that. Tsunade's depression-turns-dramatic-hissy-fit was probably not the best time. Such was my level of skill at wry humor, I nearly laughed at the revelation.

I met the tall shinobi's gaze and figured that at least I would be hard to read. Or maybe that's bad . . . my multitude of thoughts does tend to read like static. "You should stay with her," I said. "She—" I glanced Tsunade's way. Rats. She was coming over here.

The blonde woman gave me a flat look before moving on to address Jiraiya. It was more put-down talk. Listening to it made me want to slap her.

Here's how the evening panned out. Naruto was defiant and shocked them all with his desire to become Hokage (if there was one thing that could never surprise me about Naruto, it was that very vehemence. I've seen too many flashbacks). Tsunade let Naruto's thunder crack her bratty shell a bit and literally bet her potential Hokage-ship on it (my trust in her leadership? Broken). Jiraiya took Tsunade drinking, and the rest of us got to hang out with Real Life. Which is to say, we rented rooms for the night.

It was _very_ exciting.

I begged Shizune to let me head to the outskirts of the forest. I cited a "headache," which was code for "my creepy kekkei genkai is too much to deal with right now." Shizune let me, provided I take a slug with me. Orochimaru was still on the loose. I was to keep an eye out and ask the slug to reverse-summon me instantly if I so much as heard a twig snap. Shizune's pretty cool like that. Tsunade would have tied me to a bed.

Good thing Tsunade was occupied.

I later found out that Tsunade does not summon slugs, she in fact only summons _one_ slug, and that slug can literally divide into thousands if not millions of bodies. I don't know how Katsuyu does it. But it's pretty funny that at this point in time, I thought that "Katsuyu" was a Japanese word for slug.

I'll note that the name _is_ derived from a form of the word.

"Hey," I said to the small white-and-blue slug on my shoulder, "what's your name?"

"Katsuyu," it replied.

I nodded along, not realizing that Katsuyu was the same being as the small, medium, and large slugs I'd seen at various moments. I just figured the slugs were identical. I'm so dense sometimes.

"Why are trees so comforting?" I asked an hour later. I was calmer now. Tsunade's maelstrom of emotions wasn't tormenting me with quite the same fury. I had a terrible itch to write it all down in a journal. Too bad writing with chakra would take so long.

Not to mention that the sky had grown dark before I'd left Shizune and Naruto. Chakra was the only thing I could still see clearly.

My therapy slug wiggled its eyestalks. "Trees are a rich source of natural energy. Your chakra responds well to that, Tami-kun."

I frowned. I felt like I'd heard snatches of this conversation before. "Is it my chakra that responds, though? Or does my blood? I thought my blood was the carrier for my system. Why wouldn't my skin do anything?"

The slug, Katsuyu, mulled over my words. "There is a clan I have heard of that uses an enzyme to absorb natural energy. But you do not absorb it."

Still, I thought natural energy had more to do with land and the atmosphere. Trees weren't really part of that.

"We should go," Katsuyu said quietly. Its feelers were moving gently.

I hopped down from the tree—if there was a real emergency, we'd already be back at the hotel—and started the jog back to civilization. "What was it?" I asked when the slug on my shoulder seemed less worried (also when we were under streetlights and I didn't have to rely on my chakra-sight).

"A snake," Katsuyu replied.

"Oh. Well, I guess I noticed a few of them, too." I hadn't seen any serpent-shaped blobs of chakra actually moving around, though. Perhaps it had been out of my range?

Katsuyu bobbed along as I wove my way through the boisterous evening traffic. "Orochimaru-sama has snake summons."

I nodded. "With all that Shizune's been muttering about him, I'm not surprised."

We passed the marketplace—full of signs I couldn't read—and found a back road that led to the hotel. "Oh, good," I muttered, "home, quiet home."

Katsuyu made a weird clicking noise that sounded disapproving.

"You're right," I said. "It's hotel, quiet hotel."

The slug rolled her eyestalks.

I laughed and knocked on the door.

* * *

 _~Welcome back! I hope you enjoyed the latest installment, and as a heads up, the next chapter will take us back to the "present" time._

 _A small comparison with the canon timeline: Tsunade's group arrives in Tanzaku. Tami splits off immediately (and luckily is not killed in the woods). In canon, Tsunade has an unlucky winning streak and wants to leave, then runs into Orochimaru while Shizune does a bit of sightseeing. Same thing here - just they'd pick Tami up on their way out. When Orochimaru leaves, Tsunade heads to a bar for the evening. Jiraiya and Naruto find her here (Tami also found her) and there's a small spat and Tsunade and Jiraiya head off to drink some more. Naruto has one week to master the Rasengan._

 _Reply to the anon ren7720: :D He's really particular about his reputation, isn't he? He has to be a cold, heartless murderer who bullies his brother and all that. It's a delicate science!_

 _Thanks for the support, guys! The last few months have been reviewpocalypse after each updated story, for some reason, but I know you're all still there and it's pretty wonderful sharing my thoughts with you. I've really liked how the characterization of this story has been going. Ah, it's great when I'm happy with a chapter. (Hm, maybe because I think of this story as more casual?) Anyway, thanks for reading through my comments, and I look forward to sharing the next chapter before too long._

 _Soon: Boruto. Also cake. Also mud._


	10. Journal V, iii

_._

* * *

 _Journal V_

 _-Uchiha garden, Konoha-_

* * *

"Mom, Mom, I entered the chūnin exam!"

"Oh? That's nice, dear."

"Mom, are you seriously going to pretend you don't notice Naomi hiding over your head in a tree?"

I smiled. "The eyes in the back of my head don't extend upward. It's a serious design flaw."

Minoru fixed me with a Look. "Mom, _you have the Seikatsugan_."

"And Naomi is working on her surveillance skills. Your point being?"

My son huffed, showing a level of maturity that completely warranted the chūnin rank. "Anyway, Tenten-sensei made me promise to never use a Kote. I think she's bitter about our first day as a team, when I pretended I had the Sharingan and used a genjutsu to—"

Sometimes I wonder if people ever look past my son's quiet exterior to see the chatterbox lurking inside. But I ignored that now in favor of listening. And listening.

And listening.

"My," I said when he'd run through the most recent account of his life's adventures and lifetime pranking achievements, "you weren't kidding when you said you haven't seen Minako recently. I feel honored that you're trusting me with blackmail material." And now I knew for sure who was responsible for the pink uchiwa on our front door. "But why haven't you hunted down your sister yet?"

Minoru's whole body perked up at the mention of his twin. "Isn't she out of the village until tomorrow?"

"Not according to the chūnin exam application she handed your father an hour—"

He didn't even stop to shut the gate behind him. I sighed. "Naomi, can you hop down and shut the gate?"

The tree-borne girl pouted. "Make Mikoto," she whined.

" _Mikoto_ is inside taking her nap," I pointed out.

Naomi hopped down and shut the gate.

"Thank you," I said. "Now, maybe you should try hiding in the bushes. Your father will be home soon."

Naomi scampered off to gather as many rocks as she could. Her newest phase was taking every opportunity to try to hit Itachi with a rock. I just kept her away from conventional weapons. She'd never _hit_ him, but I had to enforce _some_ kind of boundary when Itachi thought being stabbed was cute.

In his defense, that was _one_ time.

In my defense, I'd had a fever that day.

That sounds more incriminating than it should.

I let Naomi coat her rocks in mud (clever) and headed into the house to throw one of my Western-style dinners together. Spaghetti, I was thinking.

Naomi cackled outside and— "Naomi, bring me that senbon right now." Thank goodness for the Seikatsugan. I pulled a box of noodles out of the pantry and fished the other ingredients out of hiding, too. Hm, would Minako invite her teammates over for dinner? She tended to do that after longer missions. She liked to tease poor Sumire about Kazuo.

Minako had confided in me that Sumire liked Boruto (blech! said Minako), but no one was immune to the amazing charms of Uchiha Kazuo. I'd likewise confided to Minako that no one could resist the charms of Uchiha Itachi, either. She'd run from the room gagging. I'm not sorry.

One of Itachi's crows flew into the kitchen to let me know he'd be five minutes late today. _My_ crows didn't come inside the kitchen.

I woke Mikoto up and told her she could come play with the crow. The disgraced bird informed me that it would _never, ever_ come into my kitchen again. I laughed, then ran for Taiki's crib when he woke up crying.

And that was how Itachi found us—Naomi pelting him with mud, Mikoto pulling a summon's tailfeathers half-out, and Taiki fading to intermittent sobs while I turned the loudly boiling pot of water down and considered opening a box of noodles with one hand and the Seikatsugan.

"Welcome home," I said, crossing my eyes and then—well, we'll skip the "again" line in favor of "just a normal kiss."

Taiki reached his little arms out to Itachi (traitor, he was usually a momma's boy) and I resumed the dinner-making game. "Would cucumber salad be good?" I asked.

"Yesh," Mikoto said. I snorted.

"Honey?"

"It's nothing," Itachi said, ruffling Taiki's hair in a way that screamed "we'll be talking about some deep subject tonight, mark my words."

"Cucumber salad it is."

Sanae returned from her morning-until-dinner-prep shift at her favorite Akamichi restaurant and disappeared into her room. "Table," I called.

" _Naomi can set it_."

Well.

Fortunately for Sanae, the twins came bustling in a minute later and began throwing plates onto the table. I frowned. " _Ten_ spots?" There were only seven of us here, and Minako's sensei wasn't one for dinner offers. "Taiki still uses the high chair," I pointed out dryly.

"Auntie Sakura, Sarada, and Uncle Sasuke are coming tonight," the twins said in tandem.

I blinked. I looked at Itachi in slight accusation. He met my gaze with the exact same expression. "And who invited them?" he asked.

It was the twins' turn to give each other sidelong glances. "Uh," said Minoru.

"You did," Minako tried. She rethought her words and confessed, "We told Sarada you invited them. And that Mom was making that triple-chocolate cake that Uncle Sasuke likes."

 _Ah, yes, a dessert that takes two hours to adequately prepare. Wonderful_. I sighed and considered the fact that my kids hadn't eaten a family meal with Sasuke in over two years. The idiot boy always sniffed up new threats and went running off again before the ink of his mission reports dried. Ha, at least he didn't type them up! We'd never see him.

Uchiha men operated by summons, not by those sissy inventions called "mobile phones."

"Get some chairs, then," I said.

The twins eyed me to see if I would yell, but I didn't feel like losing any more energy today. Baby number eight had stolen enough already as it was.

"Sweetheart, could you recite the recipe?" (Shinobi household hack number one: Sharingan.)

"I'm not a cookbook," Itachi said with his usual fondness.

"That's right, you're an encyclopedia. Silly me. Was it two eggs?"

"Three," he corrected. "With the whites whipped."

"I'm not _hopeless_ ," I said. "Just forgetful. Can you call Naomi in?"

When I look at my days as a whole, they're pretty mundane, but when I think about them in the play-by-play, it's more than I ever thought I could handle.

"Hey Minoru, did you see the look on Boruto's face when I got him with that paintball?"

"Yeah, pretty slick. D'you think he'll get us back tonight like he threatened?"

"Well, it's _Boruto_."

"Itachi," I groaned, "put me out of my misery."

Itachi just laughed.

* * *

"Ah, Sarada, thanks for knocking. You know you don't have to, though."

Sarada blushed a bit grumpily and looked at the floor. Her parents were just now leaving their house and weren't in view yet, but I was pretty sure I knew the reason for her knocking. "He's not in view," I told my niece. "And even if he were, we're family. There's no need to impress him with manners." Not _Sasuke_ , anyway.

"He has the Rinnegan," Sarada complained.

"Yes, but it's not activated," I said, enjoying the suspicious look at my abilities. "Uchiha men can be intimidating, though. I can see why you're concerned."

Sarada looked up at me seriously. "Aunt Tami, you've never been intimidated a day in your life."

I snorted. "Take your shoes off and go join the flock."

The black-haired girl obeyed and darted off to to exchange shoulder-punches with the twins. "You set the oven for thirty minutes?" I called to Itachi.

"I thought you didn't remember the recipe," he called back.

I leaned against the door frame and watched the sun set for a minute before my brother- and sister-in-law wandered up the path. They were arm in arm. Sakura was smiling widely.

"Oh?" I questioned when they were within comfortable speaking distance.

"Long day at the hospital," Sakura explained. "You're restoring my faith in humanity."

I smirked and backed out of the doorway so they could take off their shoes. "Maybe you've come to the wrong house," I said. "This one's set to get blitzed by a certain Uzumaki genin tonight, and I'm not sure if that's before or after the obligatory food tantrum and the usual scuffles over seconds and thirds. Taiki hasn't wanted a pickle since this morning, so I have slight hope that he's done teething for a few days."

Sasuke treated me to one of his wry looks. "I shouldn't have given you permission to marry my brother," he said.

"You didn't even _know_ I married him," I retorted.

"I've had a very _long day_ ," Sakura cut in sweetly, "and as much as I love you both, I'm hungry and I'd like to eat." She glanced at me. "I'll check on Taiki-chan's new tooth if you don't mind."

"Go right ahead. You'll have to steal him from Itachi."

She headed straight to the kitchen. Sasuke and I followed at a safe distance. I pursed my lips. "Has she told—"

"Yes, last week."

"Good, good." I pushed past Taiki's group of admirers to get to my mixer. "Itachi, can you give them the five minute warning? I just need to throw the icing together." The cake itself was still in the oven. Thank goodness Itachi had invented a cooling jutsu for times like these! Self-serving as it was. He liked his cake.

Itachi crooned one last reputation-shattering phrase of baby talk to Taiki and left to gather the various miscreants. They all knew the table was already set . . . and yet the twins and Sarada were already four minutes into the woods. Eh, Itachi would find them. They were probably testing how far away they could get.

Meanwhile, Sakura was bouncing Taiki and Sasuke was trying to resist Mikoto's charm.

Dinner was just as much of an affair as it usually was. Mikoto decided that she hated tomatoes (Sasuke's disappointment was palpable) until she caved and actually tried her spaghetti. Taiki shrieked a lot. Somehow, even though the children were all eating at different paces, they managed to finish at the exact same moment and bicker about who got to take seconds first (Sarada won).

Itachi, Sasuke, Sakura, and I kept a leisurely adult conversation going. It had been a while since we'd all talked with each other. Itachi and Sasuke hadn't had a minute to spare recently, it seemed, since they were conducting a private conversation of their own underneath the one that was safe for children's ears.

I iced the cake while the children exchanged the dirty dinner plates for smaller dessert ones. Sasuke actually smiled when his slice was placed in front of him. I just rolled my eyes.

Sakura did, too. "What would you do if Tami wasn't around?"

"Starve."

His wife elbowed him but smiled anyway. "I'm surprised you come home at night."

Itachi's eyes glinted possessively. "Don't worry, Sakura, Tami's cakes rarely last more than a few hours."

The uneaten remainder of the cake, sadly for both of the Uchiha men, went onto a countertop to wait for the inevitable nighttime raid. I felt the disturbance first. "Itachi—"

Itachi and Sanae looked my way, both drawn by the subtle note of alarm. Itachi undoubtedly started running through our protocols for unannounced chakra signatures.

"Oh," I said a second later. "It's just—"

The kitchen window shattered.

It was probably Boruto's most badly timed prank . . . ever, if the twins are to be believed. Which is pretty astonishing. The boy had finally found his maturity and had largely stopped his pranking hobby.

So here's the picture: Itachi is sitting at the table with a bite of cake enroute to his mouth. I'm also sitting at the table, although my hands are splayed between my children and the broken glass. My invisible chakra shield stopped all of the shards in plenty of time.

Sakura is in the yard holding Naruto's son Boruto by his collar.

Sasuke is crouched next to the counter, eyeing the smashed cake on the floor with a ghost of an expression I haven't seen since the days he tried to kill Itachi.

I dropped my shield first. The slight movement broke Sasuke's concentration.

Outside, Sakura let go of the blonde pre-teen. "Run fast," she suggested.

Boruto said, "Um, I didn't reali—"

Sasuke's Rinnegan activated.

Boruto _booked it_.

Taiki broke the resulting silence first with a piercing shriek of laughter. That set the other kids off, and the rest of the dessert time was a lot more lively. We sent the kids outside with a warning to keep an eye on the younger ones (not that I ever let them out of the Seikatsugan's sight) and we adults stayed inside to exchange significant glances.

I cracked first. It _was_ funny. _Terribly_ funny, and hey, I'd get Boruto to replace the window tomorrow.

"It could have been serious," Sakura said once she'd pulled her composure fully together.

I rolled my eyes. It could have been. But from the sound of it, Boruto had felt pretty guilty before Sasuke had scared him off. Boruto would never hurt his little "cousins" on purpose. He'd go for his peers the twins, but he'd never willingly harm the two small girls his genin team had babysat a time or two.

"The threat was negligible at best," Itachi said in support of me. "Tami had it well under control, and Boruto was hardly a threat."

"Yeah," I said. "Actually, I was really impressed with the kids. We've been going over emergency protocol, but I never expected that they'd actually stay quiet and let us deal with the threat."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "Itachi, were you even aware there was a threat? You didn't even stop eating."

Itachi smirked. "I didn't want to alarm the children. And you're not on the best footing, accusing me about my awareness."

Sasuke flinched. "That was _one time_! She could have been an imposter." Was Sasuke ever going to live down the time he'd mistaken his own daughter for an enemy? Not in this family.

Itachi's amusement didn't fade. "Well, fortunately you were able to intimidate Boruto-kun with the Rinnegan tonight." It was another teasing jab. Sasuke had had the Rinnegan when he'd attacked Sarada. He insists that it wasn't activated.

I shook my head. "Sarada told me that Boruto-kun is training under you, Sasuke? Has that been going well?"

Sasuke considered. "He's impatient," he said. "He thinks he knows what he wants, but he's going about it the wrong way." Dark eyes turned to Itachi. "He should have come to you, brother. You're good at turning people from the wrong path."

Um, wow, Sasuke. Fine words about a man who only talked to you when both of you were at death's door.

"If Tami hadn't saved me, things would have been different," Itachi said simply. It was far from simple! Hmph.

Sakura read the atmosphere and looked at her husband. "The other dimension, dear."

The mood in the room dropped instantly. Even Itachi frowned. "Naruto-sama told me of your report the following morning," Itachi said. "The incident is troubling."

"We need to prepare," Sasuke said. "He was strong. We have to be ready as a family."

My eyes narrowed as I replayed through a mental transcript of everything Itachi had said to me since Sasuke had shown up unannounced a few nights ago. Itachi hadn't breathed a word. That in itself wasn't a problem. There were plenty of crisis situations that my husband dealt with regularly. So long as he was mentally healthy, I saw no reason to demand details from him.

Hearing about _another dimension_ from Sakura, of all people?

I had a vested interest in alternate dimensions.

"It's our responsibility as Uchiha," Itachi said.

And he wonders why I used to think of him as suicidal.

"I'm pregnant," I said, "so you'd better repeat everything you know and give me an itemized list of how you intend to fix it."

Sasuke gave me a weird glance. "You're pregnant again?"

"I texted you, you idiot."

"Oh, I thought that was a typo . . . um, well, that means we can't use the Seikatsugan. Hn."

I rolled my eyes. "Just tell me the plan already. Or Itachi, you do it. You're the one who'll want me to stay in the village."

Itachi held up his hands defensively.

Sakura snickered.

I sighed and wondered why I put up with them all.

* * *

 _~Sakura was not attacking Boruto. She was saving him. Sasu-cake is real._

 _Putting out my feelers for fanart._

 _I absolutely love this chapter._

 _This is the official debut of Tami's kekkei genkai's name: the_ _Seikatsugan. That name doesn't quite match up with the info given so far . . . but we'll get to the reasons for the name later._ _Seikatsugan means "life eye." As I understand it, Seikatsu refers to more than just the state of being alive - it's about how you shape your life. If anyone knowledgable wants to help me out with all of the connotations, I'd love to hear more about it!_

 _We are officially in the Boruto timeline. Sasuke has just returned after his fight with a mysterious dimension traveller._

 _Anonymous replies: ren7720 (Accurate! Only the auto-translate feature didn't extend to writing, so that will take a bit of time), Guest (Aw, thanks for reading!)_


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